


Take You In

by elumish



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Future Fic, M/M, Magic, Oblivious Stiles, Possessive Derek, Scent Marking, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-04-04 19:30:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 82,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4150059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles doesn’t say goodbye before he leaves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is canon-divergent because it's based on pre-season 5 canon and there's no way season 5 isn't going to screw it up. Also, the title is from on a Robert Frost poem.

Stiles doesn’t say goodbye before he leaves.

It’s not that he doesn’t try to—they have a big going-away party planned with cake and everything, but then a unicorn-pegasus (alicorn, according to Wikipedia, which is basing its information off of My Little Pony so who knows whether it can be believed) comes galloping out of the forest and they need to hunt it down before it can impale anything more noticeable than a bear, and then Kira disappears for three days only to show up on top of a centaur two days later (and Scott is not happy about her arms being around the naked chest of a man-horse, even if said man-horse has no genitals that Stiles can find—and not that he was looking but, you know, stuff happens, and he was curious), and then his school tells him they screwed up and he actually needs to show up three days earlier than planned because of paperwork or something—but suddenly it’s a week after he unpacked his shit into his new dorm room and he realizes he never said goodbye.

And it’s not like he didn’t say goodbye to Scott, who showed up at his door at five o’clock in the morning with coffee looking like he was about to cry. And it’s not like he doesn’t keep in touch with Scott, who is staying in Beacon Hills and going to the local community college because he didn’t get a scholarship for anything better and the community college has a vet program anyway, and through Scott he indirectly keeps in touch with Kira, who is going to NYU but apparently considering transferring to somewhere in California because…something (Stiles stops listening when Scott gets to that point because, while he really does like Kira, he doesn’t need to hear about her life in excruciating detail).

And besides, saying goodbye a week later—or two weeks later, or a month later, or three months later and it’s almost Thanksgiving and he’s about to head home and it’s going to be _weird_ —feels strange and awkward and kind of tacky.

Anyway, it’s not like he’s forgotten about Beacon Hills—how could he—even though he has friends now. Human friends, even if some of them are a bit…weird. Not that he has really any room to judge because, hello, possessed by a demon fox (or was it a fox demon?), and wow, he really needs to not think about that because flashbacks and panic attacks are not fun, but one of them is really weird about giving Stiles food and not letting another one give Stiles food, and they are all really contact friendly (which Stiles did not have a problem with), and one of them plays volleyball for fun (who plays volleyball, anyway), but it’s human weirdness. Normal weirdness.

And on the other plus side, he hasn’t been attacked or injured or poisoned or sacrificed or shot at in months (literal actual months, like more than one of them), and he’s almost getting enough sleep (sort of, except when he has no shadow and can’t read and there’s something inside of him killing his friends) and a guy kissed him at a party and then gave him a blow job. Which is probably more than one plus side.

And just because his friends are being weird about him going home (“You should come with us. It’ll be fun. And it’s great back at home this time of year—it’s seventy all day long and never rains.”) it doesn’t mean he’s not going to go back (“I haven’t seen my friends in three months, and besides, I already have a bus ticket. And it’s not like I won’t be back in like four days anyway, and we’re all going to be stuck together for days on end studying for finals, so a break isn’t going to kill us. Though I know it will be hard being away from my awesomeness for that long.”). He even has presents, because their mascot is a wolf, and he’s going to get the whole pack little stuffed wolves (it’s early Christmas, whatever, and he misses them) and Kira and Lydia wolf t-shirts even though there’s no way in hell Lydia Martin would ever put a t-shirt on her perfect body.

So he says goodbye to his new friends and lets them each give him really long hugs and then gets on the bus for his godawful long bus ride and goes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...next chapter you get to see Derek and Scott and the rest of the gang. I'll try to keep up with this one but we'll see what happens. This just kind of started on a whim, so...yeah.


	2. Chapter 2

His dad picks him up from the bus stop because his car is still at home and there’s no way he’s walking the three miles home (he’s made for cars, alright, and besides, he has shit to carry), and it feels just like old times, his dad ruffling his too long (so he hasn’t had a chance to get it cut, and his friends like it long, whatever) hair and Stiles finding fast food wrappers stuffed between the driver’s seat and the console.

“Seriously? I’m gone for a few months and you go back to your artery-clogging ways?”

His dad smiles sheepishly at him. “I do eat salad sometimes.”

“Salad sometimes doesn’t make up for burgers that are more grease than meat. You have your heart to worry about.”

“My heart is fine. And you’re the college student—should I be the one telling you to eat better?”

Stiles shrugs. “Well, we all knew I’d be a superior college student.”

“Yeah, right.” But his dad is smiling. “It’s been quiet around here without you.”

He grins. “Well, obviously. I mean, noise is my specialty. How’s my town doing?”

His father shoots him a long look which, okay, dangerous to do while driving. And Stiles is just about to tell him that when he asks, “Have you not kept in touch with Scott?”

“What? No, I talk to Scott like four or five times a week. But he only cares about werewolf stuff, not…town stuff.”

“Yeah, well, without the werewolf stuff, everything has died down a bit. And let me tell you—this town needed it.” His dad stops at a red light, turning to look at him again, which is safer than doing it while driving, so yay for that. “What about you? Did you have any werewolf stuff while at college?”

“Nope. One-hundred percent werewolf free for a full three months. I didn’t even get shot at once.” The look on his father’s face is one of the scariest things Stiles has ever seen (and he’s seen a lot, and done a lot, and he really needs to stop thinking about that); it’s like someone just stabbed him or hit him over the head or shot him (which really does seem ironic), and he isn’t sure what to do. Including, apparently, follow traffic laws. “The light’s green.”

His dad blinks at him, then at the light, then starts driving again. He’s silent for a block, then grimaces and says, “You know, that’s really not what I like to hear.”

“That I didn’t get shot? I would think that would be exactly what you would like to hear. Unless you want me to get shot. Which would be really unfortunate, because you’re my dad, and a sheriff, and if you want your own son to get shot, then—”

“Stiles, stop.” Stiles closes his mouth because his dad still sounds kind of…weird. “It’s not what I like to hear because…because it means your metric for what is good is you not being shot. Which should not be your metric for a successful semester. Though you, getting away from this werewolf stuff, I think it’s”—Stiles’s phone buzzes—“great.” His phone buzzes again, and then again. “Who’s texting you?”

“Scott, probably. Or Jake.” And speaking of that, he should probably check his phone before whoever it is freaks out. Because Jake has done that, and he could totally see Scott doing that.

“Jake being…?”

“Friend. Human.” Weird as hell, but human. And sure enough, two of the messages are from him.

_You make it home yet?_

_If your bus crashed I’m going to be pissed._

Stiles sends back _In dad’s car. Bus didn’t crash. Don’t kill Katie or Sun while I’m gone._ then checks the other message, which is from Scott. So hooray for his instincts.

Scott’s reads _Whn u cming over?_ Which mostly just proves that Scott never actually learned how to text with any sort of actual skill, which considering how much they texted when trying to not be killed by werewolves or kamina or alicorn or whatever, is kind of astounding, if not totally surprising. If such a combination is possible.

To that he send back _Half hour._

\--

In reality it’s more like thirty-five minutes, which is mostly because he’s apparently supposed to meet them at Derek’s apartment (something about Scott’s mom not being all that fond of a bunch of werewolf teenagers piling into her house on a regular basis) and he can’t remember where it is (actually he can, but he doesn’t want to admit that, so he shows up late so he can pretend he doesn’t).

Scott’s standing outside when he gets there, along with Derek (looking as unfairly muscly and hot as always) and Malia (who is mostly no longer weird to be around except that it’s always a little weird being around her because she still hasn’t quite learned how to be a real person yet), and they all (minus Derek, so really two of them) look super happy as he pulls up in his Jeep with the windows rolled up like a normal person because it’s cold out.

And then he opens the door and steps out and Derek turns around and walks into his apartment and Scott looks like he wants to kill someone and Malia wrinkles her nose and says, “You smell weird.”

Panic hits Stiles, because goddamn it, isn’t he supposed to be done with this shit? “Am I dying? Do I smell like I’m dying? Please tell me I’m not dying. I’m too young and attractive to die.”

Malia shakes her head, walking over towards him. “You smell like wolves.”

Oh, that’s just fantastic. “Is this like, sat in the same bus seat as werewolves and some of their smell rubbed off on me, or…?”

“It smells like you’re having sex with them.” She grins like that wasn’t a totally weird announcement. “Three of them.”

“Believe me, I would know if I was having sex with werewolves, and I’m not.” Except three of them is… “Could it be from just being really really friendly with werewolves?”

Scott snarls, then clamps his hand over his nose and mouth and says, “Only if they were marking you. You smell like their territory, and it’s—” His eyes flash red, and the whole thing is honestly getting to be a bit unnerving. “You should shower.”

Okay then. “Yeah, I’ll go do that. Because you look like you’re about to rip my throat out—nice to see you too, dude, glad we could catch up—and then I’ll be back and we can figure out the Thanksgiving deets.”

Scott nods, his hand still over his mouth, and Stiles climbs back into his truck to head home. Because getting his throat ripped out by his best friend because he smells like weird werewolf is really not high on his list of things to do today. And also, seriously? He’s back in Beacon Hills for half an hour and there’s already a werewolf issue? Do the issues just follow him? Maybe they follow him? (Probably they follow him.)

He showers with as much bath wash as he can find (okay, yes, he likes vanilla bath wash, and maybe he’ll smell like an artificial vanilla plant to Scott and whoever, but that’s better than smelling like the werewolves that have apparently been rubbing themselves all over him enough to make him smell like he’s been having sex with them. And he jerks off, too, while he has the chance, because doing that in college showers is really weird, and with the bath wash they shouldn’t be able to smell it on him, and in the middle of the whole shower experience he’s mostly just pissed at Jake and Katie and Sun because goddamn it they’re werewolves and they didn’t tell him? What kind of friends do that?

And it’s not like he told them about werewolves, but he’s also not a werewolf and doesn’t get the urge to chomp on people once a month (though there are some people he would definitely like to get his mouth on, but that’s a whole separate issue, and he’s not likely to gnaw chunks of flesh off of whoever he hooks up with).

But now that he knows, he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do. Call them and go “hey, so we figured out you’re a werewolf because you scent-marked me and my best friend flipped his shit because he’s an alpha and werewolves are weird as hell”? Wait until he goes back to school and confront them about their lunarly (is that a word?) habits? Never speak to them again?

But the last one feels like a shitty thing to do, and they are his friends, and maybe they aren’t actually werewolves, and even if they are, it would be kind of hypocritical of him given his current set of Beacon Hills friends. And the first one feels kind of awful too, because it’s Thanksgiving (kind of) and fucking with someone’s holiday like that doesn’t seem fair.

So he’ll wait and confront them later and hope they don’t gouge his eyes out or something equally painful. But for a precaution, he should probably bring a bat or something back to school with him, so if they try, he can at least get in a few good hits before his life is tragically extinguished forever.

\--

The ride back to Derek’s apartment consists mostly of him smelling himself to see if he smells like anything other than vanilla, which is not hugely productive because he hadn’t known he smelled like anything before, and apparently he had reeked. Of werewolf. Which also meant that the second talk he had (after “why the fuck didn’t you tell me you wanted to eat me once a month?”) is going to be “I’m not a scratching post and you’re not a cat, so back off.”

Malia meets him outside, petting him on the shoulder a little awkwardly (welcome to the world of dealing with Malia) like he’s a small animal and saying, “You smell like chemicals.”

“Thanks. That’s my one and only goal in life, to smell like chemicals.”

She shrugs. “Better than smelling like another pack.”

“Where’s Scott?”

“Inside. He’s talking to Liam about doing the pain healing thing, because apparently Liam is really bad at it.” She grinned, bearing her teeth. “I’m better.”

That is a surprise, to say the least. Not that he’s going to tell her that. Even when they were dating (or her sleeping in his bed and them making out and that one attempted blow job he really didn’t want to think about because there had been too many teeth for his peace of mind), he had been a little bit scared of her, because she was a little bit feral and a lot socially awkward. She didn’t really know how to be a person.

Inside, Liam is crouched next to Kira on the couch; his hand is on her arm, which has one long shallow cut along it, and Scott is hovering awkwardly over the two of them like he wants to snatch Kira’s arm out of Liam’s grip and throw Liam against something. Or maybe Stiles is just projecting.

Scott looks up at him when he shuts the door, his nose wrinkling. “What did you do?”

Stiles is fairly certain (is hoping, at least) that Scott isn’t talking about the jerking off, so he says, “It’s bath wash. To get the scent off.”

“It didn’t work.”

Stiles jerks around to see Derek standing behind him, hands across his chest, a scowl on his face, and he nearly jumps out of his skin. “What the hell, dude? You need a bell or something, because not all of us have super hearing. And what do you mean, it didn’t work? I smell like a goddamn vanilla factory.”

Derek’s grimace deepens. “Come with me.”

“Maybe say that again like you don’t want to kill me.”

“Now.”

Stiles holds up his hands, hoping that none of them can smell under the pound of vanilla that he’s actually kind of aroused by that (what? Derek’s growly voice is seriously sexy). “Fine. Whatever.” He twists to look back to look at Scott. “You keep being deprived of my awesomeness. It’s going to start weighing on you.”

Scott barely looks at him which, okay, his girlfriend is bleeding, Stiles can’t blame him for being distracted. Derek growls under his breath, and Stiles turns back towards him, following him as he heads through the apartment (there are rooms now, or something kind of like walls, so it isn’t just a really big room with a table and a couple of lights, and it’s almost like Derek is a real person now). Derek stops in what looks kind of like a bedroom (holy shit there’s a bed, he’s in a room with Derek and a bed and he really has to stop thinking about that because Derek might be able to smell that and that is not something he wants Derek smelling) and yanks something out of a dresser.

“Take off your shirt.”

“What?”

Derek lets out a low growl again. “Your shirt smells like that other pack, and it’s going to piss Scott the fuck off once he gets his nose out of his ass and starts smelling it. And I’m not really in the mood to deal with a territorial alpha today, so take your shirt off or I’m taking it off for you.”

Wow, okay, again that growly take-charge voice is seriously getting to Stiles (and apparently he has some kind of military kink or something that he didn’t know about, because this taking orders thing might do it for him), but it’s also super freaking creepy. “Do you take lessons on how to sound like a serial killer? Seriously? I mean you—what the fuck are you doing?” Derek’s hands has gone to the hem of his shirt and started yanking it up, and Stiles jerks away, hands covering his stomach.

“I told you; if you don’t take it off, I will.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll take my shirt off.” Words he never thought he would say to Derek. “Just…turn around or something.” Derek just stares at him. “Fine. Whatever.” Stiles pulls the shirt up and over his head, glad as hell he kept up going to the gym because without running away from werewolves all the time he would have otherwise gotten flabby, which is the last thing he wants to look in front of Derek. Who stares at him unblinking for a second as Stiles clutches the shirt to himself, and then he throws the shirt crumpled in his hands at Stiles. It hits him in the face, and by the time he gets it untangled from his head Derek is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I've kind of figured out where this is going, so that's good. Also, sorry for any weird tense issues. I'm not used to writing in present tense, and so I keep slipping into past tense and probably haven't fixed all of my mistakes.


	3. Chapter 3

Scott is sitting on the couch with Kira when Stiles gets back, wrapping Kira’s arm in a bandage, with Liam pacing back and forth like he isn’t sure what to do with himself. It’s a feeling Stiles knows all too well.

“Get sick of seeing your girlfriend cut up?”

Scott looks up at him, a huge smile on his face. “I’m so glad you’re back. And yeah, the smell of blood was getting to me.” He runs a hand across Kira’s hair. “You didn’t need to do that, you know.”

She shrugs. “Always glad to help.” She looks at Stiles. “Why did you change your shirt?”

Scott’s eyes focus on him now. “Wait, why do you smell like Derek?”

“Your grumpy former-alpha decided my shirt still smelled too much like whatever werewolf has been rubbing itself against me, so he gave me his.” Stiles slumps down in one of the chairs (because Derek has actual chairs now that are made of more than just wood or metal, and it’s a goddamn miracle), sprawling against it. “I don’t question things like that anymore.”

“Yes you do.”

Scott knows him too well. “Yeah, I do. But I’m too lazy to do laundry, so…Derek-shirt it is.”

Liam picks his head up from where he’s staring at the floor, his feet wearing a hole in the rug (and there’s a rug, too, like it’s a real place to live) as he paces, and his nostrils flare. “Someone’s here. A wolf.” He starts to move towards the door, then stops. “He smells like pack. I don’t know him, but he…smells like pack.”

Scott’s face lights up, and he bounces to his feet. “Isaac’s here.”

“Isaac?”

“He decided to come by for the holidays, try being back for a few days. He’s staying with Mr. Argent.”

“Why didn’t you tell me Isaac was coming back?”

Scott is already moving towards the door, but turns back to say, “I found out when you were on the bus. Apparently he didn’t want to tell me until he was sure he was coming.”

Stiles jumps to his feet to follow after him, because holy shit, Isaac’s back. And also, crap, he doesn’t have a wolf toy for Isaac (maybe he’ll get him one for actual Christmas, if Isaac is coming back for that too). “Wait, so is Thanksgiving dinner going to be, what, your mom and my dad and the two of us and the entire extended wolf-pack-family?”

Scott shrugs like that’s no big deal, having a shit ton of werewolves in the same room with his dad (the _sheriff,_ who okay knows, but still) and Scott’s mom (who okay also knows, but _still_ ). Like that’s perfectly fucking normal. Which it really shouldn’t be but kind of is because this is their life, and could he have possibly forgotten that in the past three months with people who may or may not be werewolves passing as humans?

And then the door opens and Isaac walks in and he looks like he’s about to freak the fuck out, and then Scott wraps him in a hug and the tension visibly drains from him and he kind of slumps down in Scott’s grip like he’s a marionette whose strings have been cut. Scott holds him up like it’s no big deal (which for a werewolf it probably isn’t), and there’s a kind of whining noise coming from Isaac (because it’s probably not coming from Scott), and it looks so weirdly not human that Stiles can’t keep from staring.

And then Liam is next to him, and Stiles flinches and screams a little (he doesn’t shriek, because that’s girly and hysterical, and he’s not a hysterical or girly person, not that there’s anything wrong with being girly, because Lydia is like the embodiment of girly and also a perfect human being banshee person, but he’s not a girly person mostly he doesn’t think), and Liam laughs. “What’s the deal with him?”

Stiles shrugs. “He used to live here and his dad was a dick and then” (Stiles was possessed and started hurting his friends and Allison was killed) “stuff happened and he left for a while. But he’s part of, you know, your pack.”

“Huh.” Liam peers at where Isaac’s still latched onto Scott, who seems to have absolutely no problem with it. “He seems kind of weak.”

“He has some issues.”

Isaac picks up his head from Scott’s shoulder to glare at the two of them. “I can hear you, you know.”

Stiles grins at him. “I wasn’t sure you still spoke English. Thought you would be speaking all _français_ now.”

Isaac grins back, pulling away to walk towards them. “ _Je parle un peu français._ But I’m not very good at it.”

“Wait, but aren’t you still living in Paris? How are you going to college then?”

“There are a couple of English-language programs at l’École Polytechnique de Paris.” Isaac shrugs one shoulder, moving a little bit towards Scott as he starts walking back towards Kira. “Sorry I haven’t come back before now, but it’s…” He swallows so hard its visible, glancing at Scott. “The whole town smells like what happened, still.”

Stiles can’t help the flinch, because (he has no shadow and he can’t read and he’s hurting his friends and there’s nothing he can do to stop it) something flashes across his vision, and Isaac looks immediately sorry, his hand rubbing against his mouth.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring that up.”

Stiles shakes his head. “No big. How’s school going? Making our alpha here proud?”

Now Isaac is the one who flinches, and it’s like they’re walking through a goddam minefield and they know where the mines are but they keep stepping on them anyway because they’re fucking morons and he’s apparently forgotten how to talk to his friends. But then Isaac smiles and says, “School’s going well. For whatever reason the girls love that I _parle mal français_.”

“ _No hablo francés._ ”

They both look at Scott like they expect him to say something in another language, which is totally ridiculous because Scott barely speaks English some days. He’s a great person, a wonderful alpha (sometimes), but occasionally he’s a total moron. But then, from the couch, comes Kira’s, “ _Chotto furansugo to supeingo wo hanaseru._ ” They all look at her, including Scott, who looks like someone has just hit him over the head, and she smiles. “I’ve been practicing.” Scott stares at her for another second, then goes over and kisses her which, okay, haven’t they seen each other recently? Like, for the past who knows how many hours? Can’t they save it for a little while? (Apparently not, given the way that they’re wrapped around each other like two very amorous squids who are trying to produce many little squids. How do squids reproduce?)

Liam clears his throat next to him, which does actually zero to solve the problem, and then Isaac steps up on the other side of him, sniffs, and asks, “Have you finally started sleeping with Derek?”

Stiles doesn’t brain himself on the nearest chair, though it’s a close thing. “I’m not sleeping with Derek. Why do people think I’m sleeping with Derek? And what do you mean, ‘finally’?”

“You smell like him.”

“He gave me a shirt. My shirt smelled like other werewolves, apparently, and he thought Scott was going to rip it off of me or something, so he gave me a shirt.”

At that, Scott finally pulls himself away from Kira to ask, “Do you know where you met the werewolves?”

Well, shit. He had forgotten that he was going to have to actually tell his friends about the werewolves that he may or may not have been befriended by. “Because Malia said it was three—and where is she, anyway?—I’m guessing it might be, you know, the people that I’m friends with in college.”

“You met other werewolves and didn’t tell me?”

Seriously? Is Scott really that bad at figuring things out? “Yes, I obviously befriended other werewolves and kept it from you because I wanted you to freak out when I came home smelling like them. That was my plan all along.”

“Really?”

“ _No._ I have no idea how you survived with me gone. No, I’m just pretty sure that the people I’m friends with are werewolves. Without telling me. Secret werewolves. Like you’re supposed to be.”

Liam snorts next to him. “And you never figured out when they tried to eat you on the full moon?”

“Or just weren’t there?” Isaac puts in because he’s a smart person who gets that secret werewolves aren’t going to be running around on the full moon.

Stiles shrugs, walking back over to slump down in what he was officially designating his chair. “It’s not like I was paying attention to the lunar calendar while I was down there.”

“Why not?”

Why did Scott think? “Because there weren’t supposed to be werewolves, dumbass. I wasn’t tracking when people showed up or not based on whether it was the full moon, because the full moon wasn’t supposed to frickin’ matter anymore, not while I was there.” Which had been part of the whole goddamn point of going there. Not that he doesn’t love Beacon Hills and his friends, but being not at risk of being killed for actual months at a time was a luxury he just doesn’t have there.

Scott looks upset which, okay, that may have sounded a little worse aloud than he had intended it to. But still. He had had a good thing going there, and it wasn’t like he had given up on his Beacon Hills friends or forgotten about then or anything. He talks to Scott almost as much as he talks to Sun, and he lives with Sun.

Who is apparently a werewolf. Which might also explain why Sun camped out with Jake every once in a while. Like, once a month. Which Stiles had totally not noticed because he was so determined to ignore anything that could possibly be werewolf related. Damn it.

“Anyway.” Let’s change the subject. Now. Before it came out just had much Stiles had been trying to get away. “Thanksgiving. Thursday. We need to figure out all the deets. Now.”

Isaac crouched down on another one of the chairs, his shoulders hunched slightly. “Mr. Argent invited me to have Thanksgiving dinner with him. We’re not going to…it’s not something either of us really want to…maybe I’ll see you Friday.”

Scott shook his head. “No, join us. We want the entire pack there, if we can.”

Except how is the entire pack—which is getting weirdly large given that it was a bunch of teenagers (plus Derek, must not forget him) who had been semi-arbitrarily picked, apparently for having the least useful traits for a new werewolf to have—going to fit in anyone’s house? And who is going to cook for them?

Liam rolls his eyes. “I have a family, you know. Like, an actual family.”

Scott looks like he wants to argue, but then Kira clears her throat and says, “I’m going to have to have Thanksgiving with my parents, too.”

And now Scott looks absolutely crushed, and that is very much just like old times, when Scott was on-again off-again on-but-really-off-but-really-on again with Allison and trying to figure out how to make things work without being killed by some member of her family or another. Except this isn’t life or death. Thank God.

Stiles clears his throat because it looks like Scott is going to either cry or start making out with Kira again and he wants to forestall both options before they get any closer to reality. “So that leaves you, Isaac, Malia, grumpy, and…are we inviting Mr. Argent? Just to round out the Twilight-noir nightmare that will be my dining room?”

They all look at Isaac, who’s looking at Scott, who finally realizes that and shrugs. “We can invite him.”

Great. Because that won’t be totally weird. But the alpha had declared it, so it was law. Or something. Whatever. “I’m going to call my dad and tell him werewolves are invading my house.” He jolts out of the chair because he’s been sitting for too long and he’s starting to get jittery. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

And then he heads out of the house to make the call.

His dad picks up on the second ring. “What?”

“It’s almost like you’re not happy to hear from your favorite son.”

He can practically hear his father rolling his eyes. “You’re my only son.”

Stiles grins into the phone. “Semantics. Anyway, I just wanted to inform you that our Thanksgiving dinner will now be made up of three werewolves, a werecoyote, and possibly the slightly serial killer-y father of our” (dead) “former classmate.” Which actually did not quite come out how he had planned it. “They’re coming over. We’re not eating them. Not that we would have much luck trying to eat them. And eating humans is a bad idea, anyway. Prions and stuff. I’m not sure if the same thing is true when it comes to werewolves. Not that I have any particular urge to try to eat a werewolf. They’re kind of human, so it would be like kind of cannibalism. Is it possible to have kind of cannibalism, or is cannibalism like pregnancy, where you either are pregnant or you’re not?”

“Stiles.”

“Yes?”

“You’re cooking.” Which, Stiles figures, is about as much of an agreement as he’s going to get.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Derek in this one. Sorry. There will be Derek in the next one, and awkward family-ness, and probably in the one after that you get to see the werewolves you have been hearing so much about.
> 
> Also (because I forgot that this isn't stuff that people can necessarily read, and not that it matters all that much for the plot but whatever), here are the translations for the chapter:
> 
> "Je parle un peu français." I speak a little French (in French)
> 
> "parle mal français" speak french badly (in French)
> 
> "No hablo francés." I don't speak French (in Spanish)
> 
> "Chotto furansugo to supeingo wo hanaseru." (ちょっとフランス語とスペーン語を話せる。) I can speak a little French and Spanish (in Japanese).


	4. Chapter 4

Thanksgiving is like trying to herd cats while simultaneously trying to get those cats to herd sheep, except with more werewolves. 

Isaac shows up an hour early with pie, his shoulders pulled up around his ears like he thinks they're going to kick him out if he breathes too hard. He's put to work in the kitchen, which mostly means he stands there looking miserable until Stiles hands him a potato to peel. He's an excellent potato peeler. Which is awesome, because Stiles has neither the patience nor the attention span to peel potatoes.

Mr. Argent declined his invitation (thank fuck), so there’s no threat of him showing up. Which is probably good, even if his murderous werewolf-killing ways have declined in recent years.

Scott shows up fifteen minutes late with honest-to-god Starbucks, which Stiles laughs too hard to explain about, especially because there is no Starbucks in Beacon Hills and he would have had to go at least one town over to find one. But it’s so Scott that it feels like a piece of Stiles’s chest has been filled that he didn’t even know was empty.

They all know Scott’s mom is going to be late because she has to finish up her shift (because she works even when other people would cover it, and she’s a fantastic human being, and Stiles is pretty sure they would never have survived to adulthood(ish) without her), which leaves just…Derek.

Derek shows up precisely on time (which is six pm) looking dark and slouchy and far too attractive for anyone’s good and then proceeds to stand in the kitchen watching Stiles frantically finish cooking and Isaac try really hard to be useful while also being unobtrusive (he’s eventually kicked out to set the table) without saying anything. At all. Like, nothing. No words come from his mouth as he stands just to the side of the doorway and stares.

Fucking werewolves.

And Malia (Stiles is guiltily relieved by) has decided that Thanksgiving is a “people thing that involves too many people” and has declined the invitation so she can instead go run around the woods or something equally Malia-like.

And that, in addition to Stiles and his not-happy-about-this-but-dealing father, makes up their Thanksgiving party. Three werewolves and three humans. It’s practically even odds, if you ignore the fact that the werewolves are…werewolves, and also that in the house is one alpha and one former alpha, even if Derek was admittedly kind of a shit alpha. Like, really actually a shit alpha. A hot, grumpy, trying-too-hard shit alpha.

Finally, Mrs. McCall shows up looking exhausted like usual, and Stiles and Isaac and Scott transfer the massive amounts of food (werewolves eat a lot, holy shit) to the table and Stiles starts directing people to their seats. Of which there are enough (barely), though there isn’t really actually enough space. They end up with his dad at one end, with Stiles to his right and Isaac to his left. Derek is next to Isaac, Scott is next to Stiles, and Mrs. McCall is at the other end. Which means that they’re all pressed together like they’re about to get very, very friendly, and not in a family way.

They pass around the food—turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, green beans—and the werewolves all wait for Scott to start eating before they start. Which is super weird. Entertaining but super weird. And then they all dig in, Isaac looking like he hasn’t eaten in a month, Derek attacking his plate with single-minded determination, and Scott eating with his usual enthusiasm.

And then Stiles’s dad turns to Isaac and asks, “If you’re going to school in France, aren’t you missing class?” and Isaac freezes and then hunches over, his fork stabbed into his mashed potatoes like he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do with it.

There’s the most uncomfortable moment of silence Stiles has sat through in a while, and then Derek cups his hand around the back of Isaac’s neck, and his shoulders go down slightly like Derek is pulling pain from him. But there are no black veins that Stiles can see (not that he can see a whole lot, considering that Derek is in a long sleeve shirt), and he has a feeling whatever pain there is isn’t physical.

After a second, Isaac turns back to Stiles’s dad and says, “One of my _profs_ —uh, professors—is at a conference this weekend, so he cancelled class, and most of the rest of my classes are more independent, so…I thought it would be okay if I came back just for this weekend.” Stiles’s dad looks like he wants to say something, but Isaac pushes forward, adding, “And my father had no will, so I ended up inheriting the money he had—not that there’s much, and I do what work I can, and I don’t spend that much money—so I figured I could afford a round-trip ticket.” And then, with that done, he ducks his head back down, and Stiles can see Derek’s hand flexing on his neck.

Stiles’s dad glances at Stiles, but he knows (of course he knows), and so he doesn’t comment, just nods and smiles and goes back to eating his food.

A few minutes later, Mrs. McCall looks at Stiles and asks, “So how’s school going?” because apparently that’s something parents have some sort of biological imperative to ask at the first opportunity.

This is kind of less of a minefield, so he shrugs. “It’s going fine. My classes are pretty interesting.”

“What are you studying?”

“I’m double majoring in criminology and anthropology, with a focus on cryptozoology.” His dad and Scott’s mom clearly don’t know what that is, but Derek apparently does, because Stiles can see him hiding a smirk as he shovels more potatoes into his mouth.

Mrs. McCall smiles. “Any friends?”

And now Derek growls, low and hard and really really angry (and way to go on not sounding like a serial killer in front of the sheriff), and Mrs. McCall looks kind of scared and it’s all getting kind of weird, so Stiles clears his throat and says, “A few.”

There must be something in his voice (or maybe Mrs. McCall is magic, which he totally wouldn’t doubt), because she narrows her eyes at him and says, “Human friends?”

Which was not a conversation he particularly wanted to have, especially with his dad there, but, “Maybe.”

“Stiles—”

Stiles throws up his hands, clipping Scott in the shoulder (and maybe that wasn’t the best idea when they were basically sitting in each other’s laps). “Look, okay, I thought that they were human for the past semester—or slightly less than a semester, because technically the semester isn’t over, but close to a semester—but Scott and our merry band of lycanthropes think—”

“Know,” Derek growls.

“—know,” Stiles concedes, “that they’re werewolves, or at least that there’re werewolves. Which is really hard to say, by the way. And before you start pointing fingers at me telling me I should have paid more attention, I have done that gig already and am perfectly aware that I screwed up, so let’s not do that again because, hey, it’s Thanksgiving, and we’re going to play the game of ‘what is everyone thankful for’ instead.”

There’s silence for a second at that, and then Scott says, “I’m thankful for the food and my pack.”

And apparently they’re actually playing that game. Fantastic. Stiles gestures towards his dad, who smiles with what looks like a mix of exasperation and fondness that he’s super familiar with on his face. “I’m thankful that the people I care about are alive and healthy.”

Which is totally fair. Mrs. McCall goes next, without prompting, because she’s an awesome person and is letting them get away with not continuing to talk about the awkwardness that apparently is Stiles’s friendship situation. Yay Thanksgiving. “I’m thankful my son has gone five months without coming home covered in blood—his or anybody else’s. It was getting annoying to have to wash stains out of everything.”

Okay, that’s…actually pretty impressive. Five months was basically a record for them, and it had been for all of them. And some small stupid part of Stiles can’t help wondering if it was because he is gone. If it is because he is the one who brings the bad things with him, and now that he isn’t living in Beacon Hills anymore, the bad things will stay away.

Isaac, hunched over his food like he’s afraid they were going to take it away from him, mumbles something about how he’s thankful for his alpha and for Mr. Argent taking him in, and then all that’s left is Stiles and Derek. Neither of whom, given Derek’s expression, want to talk, even though, yeah, it was Stiles’s idea to start this. But to be fair, he hadn’t actually thought anyone would go along with it. But that should teach him not to underestimate Scott’s ability to do cutesy things on command.

Stiles gestures towards Derek, who glowers at him until Stiles sighs. “Fine, I’ll go next.” Which means that he has to actually think of something. “Um. I’m glad that nobody’s dead and that I’m not failing any of my classes.” And that’s all true.

Now they all look at Derek, who stares at Stiles for a long time (with a seriously serial killer-y stare (yay alliteration)) then looks at Scott and says in a surprisingly formal voice, “I am thankful to be part of a pack that is healthy and stable.” He keeps his eyes on Scott for another few seconds, then (apropos to nothing) wraps an arm around Isaac’s shoulders. And in the moment, it’s calm.

\--

Stiles finds Derek in the kitchen later, washing dishes with a weirdly determined look on his face, like the dishes might run away from him if he doesn’t stare them down. It’s so incongruous and against everything that Stiles is possibly expecting to see that he just stops in the doorway and stares for a minute, trying to figure out if he’s been transported to an alternate reality where Derek is stable and nice and homey. Except, nope, because about fifteen seconds later Derek growls, “What?”

“I could be anyone, you know. I could be Mrs. McCall. Would you want to be snarling at your alpha’s mother?”

Derek turns to look at him, his upper lip curled up in a snarl. Which is kind of proving his point. “I knew who you were. You’re wearing my shirt.”

Right. “Speaking of that, you do realize it’s kind of creepy to just leave a bunch of shirts at someone’s house with a note saying, ‘wear these.’ Or, you know, romantic, but”—Derek growls again—“you know, I think I’m going to stick with creepy.”

“Your clothing smells like _them_.”

“And you don’t think the entire pack is going to notice that all of my clothing smells like you now?”

Derek goes back to washing the dishes, and Stiles honestly can’t deal with having a guest—even Derek—do the dishes while he just stands there, so he heads over to start drying, because there’s a shit-ton of dishes and not nearly enough space for all of it. “My smell is already here, and it’s pack. It’s not going to bother them.”

“And it doesn’t bother you, having your scent all over me?” Which was totally not what Stiles was planning on asking (that was going to be, “why the fuck are you doing the dishes in my house?”), but it’s out, so there’s that.

Derek doesn’t look at him. “No.”

And that’s totally weird. But honestly not all that much weirder than most of the rest of the shit that goes down in the town, especially involving Derek Hale, grumpy werewolf extraordinaire, so…cool. “So anyway, why are you doing dishes?”

Derek hands him another washed plate, and Stiles starts to dry it, and even if it’s weird as fuck, they’re actually a pretty efficient dish-washing team. “Just keep drying.”

“That’s a super explanatory answer to my question. Do you work on that? Being vague? Like, is that a skill you learn in werewolf school or something? Because you’re really good at it.”

Another plate, this time a bit more forceful than necessary, and Stiles’s hands close as much around Derek’s as around the actual plate. Which means that now they need to figure out how to transfer the plate to him without it dropping, which should not be this hard for two adults to do. Two totally sober, relatively intelligent adults. Who are kind of good at stuff.

Except all Stiles can think about is the heat of Derek’s hands, which are callused but also kind of wrinkly from the water, and feel so large they could probably close most of the way around Stiles’s neck without really trying, and so they could probably close very well around other things, and Stiles really should not be thinking about that in a house with three werewolves, especially when he’s standing next to (touching) one, and he seriously did not have this problem before (except, well, he kind of did, but the smell was probably usually masked by Scott and either of the love-buddies he had with him at the time, because Scott was literally always horny when with his girlfriend, and that wasn’t happening now), and this was going to get really awkward if he didn’t—

Derek’s hands flexes open, shoving Stiles’s fingers off of them, and he scrambles to keep the plate from cracking in the sink.

Two minutes of silence (for which Stiles is super proud of himself because he’s managed to keep his rambling inside his head so he doesn’t start talking about how Derek is really warm and also really hot and how sometimes he just wants to cuddle with werewolves because they’re like comfy space heaters but it would be awkward because they’re a lot less tactile with him because he’s not a werewolf and so not pack, even though he’s basically their family, and he wouldn’t want to force it on them, even though he’s totally tempted to force it on them sometimes when he feels super alone because all of his friends get awesome hugs and he got like one blow job at a party which doesn’t actually make up for not getting hugs) later, Derek asks (growls), “How are you going to approach the werewolves?”

Stiles shrugs. “I mean, they’re my friends, so I’ll just…ask them.”

Judging by his slightly more grumpy face, Derek is not happy with that answer, but all he says is, “If you’re in danger, call someone.”

“Aww, are you worried about me?”

Whatever was in Derek’s eyes drops to flatness. “If you die, it will kill Scott, and I will not lose another alpha.”

“You are worried about me.”

Derek shoves a glass in his general direction. “This is the last dish. I’m going home.” And with that, he turns and walks out of the room, and a few seconds later the door opens then closes, leaving Stiles standing in the kitchen with a glass in his hands and absolutely no idea what just happened.

\--

Scott ends up slumped on his bed that night, arms crossed behind his head as he stares up at the ceiling and Stiles sits in front of his computer, looking up nothing in particular.

A minute in, Stiles can’t help himself. “What’s going on with Derek?”

Scott looks over at him. “What do you mean?”

“He’s being all moody—even moodier than his usually moody, which is like…really moody—and he keeps forcing clothing on me, and he was doing the dishes.”

“Oh.” Scott shrugs. “I think the scent thing is really bothering him. It’s probably a born werewolf thing—I mean, it bothers me, and sorry for freaking out at you about it, but it seems to get to him more.”

Stiles stands up to start pacing, because he’s been sitting for too long, and it feels like jitters are running the length of his arms and legs, forcing him to move. “He said he was doing it because it would bother you for me to smell like them.”

“Huh.” Scott shrugs again, which really, unhelpful, man. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know, I think he’s really trying to be a good part of the pack. You know, since he officially joined and accepted me as alpha, he’s been…weird, but kind of more stable. I think being in a pack and not being in charge helps him kind of deal.”

Which makes a lot of sense, actually. Alpha Derek was unstable Derek, not the least of which because he had gotten the position by killing his uncle who had gotten the position by killing Derek’s sister. Because the Hale family has fucked up to a science. But if it’s helping keep Derek from ripping him to shreds or shoving him into any other walls, he could deal with wearing Derek’s shirts. Even if it means that Isaac and Malia think that he was sleeping with Derek (because yeah right, like Derek would ever have sex with him. The world could be on fire and their having sex could be the only thing to save it and Derek would probably still laugh at the idea. Which is kind of depressing and not what he’s going to think about).

Scott rolls over to look at him as he paces. “You know you’re our family, right?”

Stiles stops pacing to stare at him, because where the hell did that come from? “Duh.”

Scott nods, oddly serious. “Good.” Then he rolls up to a sitting position with a groan. “Now I’m going to kick your ass at Call of Duty.”

Yeah, right. “I can beat you, hands down, even with your super reflexes.” Maybe. Kind of. If he unplugs Scott’s controller halfway through.

“Yeah?”

“You’re on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is back to school. As you may be able to tell, I'm kind of writing without an outline, so some of the pacing may end up being totally weird. Apologies in advance for that.


	5. Chapter 5

Stiles leaves at oh-dark-thirty (not really, it’s like seven, but it feels like it) and he takes his Jeep because he is seriously done not having a car. Public transportation on the West Coast? Not a thing. It’s not a bad ride, even though his phone keeps buzzing and he really wants to check it but doesn’t want to get in an accident because grievous pain is not his cup of tea.

Little bits of pain (fingers gripping his shoulders too hard, growls reverberating through his chest like too much bass from really good speakers), but not boatloads of pain.

He gave the wolves to the pack (except for Isaac, to whom he apologized profusely and promised to get him one for real-Christmas), and they were over the moon. Except Derek, who just kind of looked at it. But he didn’t shred it with his claws or throw it in a fire (though Derek throwing wolves in a fire would be…not a thing that would happen, probably, now that he thinks about it), so that’s something. Maybe.

Kira loved the t-shirt and put it on immediately, while Lydia sneered at hers until Stiles dropped it in the nearest chair. But he wasn’t expecting much more than that anyway, so…it wasn’t a total loss.

Parking near campus is a nightmare, but he has dealt with so much worse that sometimes little things like this seem…petty and stupid and sometimes he feels so much damn older than everyone else around him, who think shit like this is the biggest travesty in the world. People are fucking dying (and it’s his fault, it was his fault, and he can’t stop it), and college students worry about how long it takes to get their Chinese food.

His phone vibrates again, and he startles, grabbing at it so he might be able to stop freaking the fuck out in the middle of a parking garage over something that happened like two years ago. The message is from Jake. _You back yet?_

 _Yeah. Ten minutes._ He considers sending ‘we need to talk’, but worrying werewolves is not necessarily a good idea, so that’s off the table. _Your room or mine?_

A few seconds, and then, _Yours._

Cool. His room with his werewolf roommate and his werewolf friends. Hopefully none of them would rip his throat out. Which is basically like the rest of his life.

All he needs is a baseball bat and he’ll be set.

Dragging his suitcase out of the other side of his Jeep, he heads to the dorm, and he’s stuck taking the elevator which fucking sucks but he doesn’t want to drag his suitcase and backpack up six flights of stairs. So he paces the three steps back and forth in the tiny (fucking tiny, slow, goddamn it) elevator, trying to work out the fear before he has to see the werewolves.

By the time it opens on the sixth floor, he can breathe a little better, and he’s not quite shaking anymore, the tremors under his skin but not going through his muscles. The door to his room is unlocked because Sun doesn’t believed in locked doors when he’s in the room (because he’s a werewolf and so inherently claustrophobic, why the fuck didn’t he see this before?), and he barely manages to get the door open before a warm (hot, Jesus) body collides with him, knocking him against the wall with a nose buried against his throat.

“There’s something on your shirt.” That’s Jake, mumbling into his throat, and knowing he’s a werewolf makes this so much less weird and so much more dangerous. “You should change it.”

Stiles pushes him just enough inside to push the door closed behind him before saying, “You mean you don’t like that someone else’s scent is on me?”

Jake goes really still, then pulls away, hands clasping Stiles’s shoulders just a hair too hard. “What?” His voice is almost casual enough, probably would be if Stiles didn’t know what he was looking for.

“I mean, because you’re werewolves, right?”

Sun and Katie, who are lounging on Sun’s bed, go really still, a low noise coming from that direction. Katie, probably, given that she has gold peeking through slitted eyes. Jake, though, looks…blank. Not sad blank or angry blank, but more like holding-stuff-in blank. “Why do you say that?”

Stiles fights to keep the grin off his face because, ha, he was right. “One, that’s not really the proper response when someone accuses you of being a werewolf if you’re not actually a werewolf. Two, you’ve apparently been rubbing yourself against me enough my friends thought I was having sex with all three of you. Three, Katie’s growling and her eyes are yellow, so you might want to work on that. Four, I smell like a werewolf from another pack, and it’s pissing you off.”

Jake’s upper lip lifts in a snarl, and then he snaps, “Yes, it is,” and grabs Stiles’s shirt and yanks it off, tangling it in Stiles’s flailing limbs and somehow managing to train his hands all over Stiles’s bare skin. Which kind of feels fucking fantastic, even if it’s sort of not-okay touching. But then the shirt’s off and tossed to the side and Jake is dragging Stiles over to his bed and shoving him down to slump on top of him, limbs strewn over Stiles’s like they’re one giant (small?) octopus.

Stiles flails a little, which accomplishes exactly nothing. “What the fuck, dude?”

Jake curls more closely around him, and that really does feel good, as weird as it is. Sun and Katire are watching them now, and there’s something in their eyes that looks like longing. Longing to do what, Stiles doesn’t know. Jake runs a hand across Stiles’s back. “We’re werewolves; we’re tactile. I’ve been holding back for a semester, and now you smell like another werewolf who isn’t in my pack and it really is pissing me the fuck off.”

Huh. Well, it really does feel good, and Stiles isn’t one to deny himself what he wants. Not like this, with no strings attached and no threat to the people he loves. “How are you so good at hiding it? I mean, I’m practically an expert on werewolves, and I didn’t know.”

Jake shrugs. “Any born werewolf in a stable pack—”

“Say no more.”

Jake pulls away a little to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“The born werewolf I know isn’t from a particularly…stable pack.”

A growl comes from deep inside Jake’s chest. “You’re with an unstable pack?”

“I mean, they’re stable now. Mostly. I mean, nobody has been killed in like a year or so, which is actually pretty fantastic, but Derek, uh, he lost basically his entire pack in a fire as a teenager and then kept losing the rest of them except Peter who freaking refuses to die, and so I can kind of cut him some slack in regards to not being great at passing.”

“You’re talking about the Hale pack?”

Stiles nods. “Yeah. Well, Derek’s really the only one left, but yeah.”

Sun grins at him. “That pack’s badass, you know. They took down the alpha pack and a Nogitsune.”

(He has no shadow and there is a sword in Allison and they’re all going to do and there’s nothing he can do about it. It’s his fault. It’s his fault, and they’re all going to die, he’s going to watch his friends die, he is the Nogitsune, he can’t read, he has no shadow, he’s going to watch his friends die, they’re all going to die, they’re all going to die.)

There’s a hand on the back of his neck, shoving his head down, and a voice is telling him to, “Breathe, Stiles, you have to breathe, you’re safe here and nobody’s going to hurt you. I promise nobody’s going to hurt you, but you need to breathe,” and Stiles gasps in a breathe, and then another one, and then he holds them in because otherwise he’s going to start hyperventilating and that’s not going to be fun, and he’s not having a panic attack, he’s not, he just forgets to breathe sometimes when he’s thinking about—he’s not going to keep thinking about it.

“I’m fine.”

The hand starts rubbing small circles against his back, pulling the tension from it, and he sags down against the body next to his. “You don’t have to talk about it.” Jake. “We won’t bring it up again.”

Stiles looks up, then stands, pulling away from Jake, who lets him. Which is good, because his skin is crawling now, suddenly, and if Jake had tried to hold him there there’s a good chance he would have freaked the fuck out. Again. “I’m good. I’m fine. I’m just going to walk around the room here. For a while. Yeah.”

There’s silence for a little bit (seconds, minutes, Stiles isn’t really sure), and then Jake says, “You know, we were all really surprised when Hale joined the McCall pack. Everyone thought he was going to go somewhere else, start his own pack.”

Now that was a topic Stiles knew very well. “He, uh…I think he figured out that he’s shit at being an alpha.” He turns in his pacing to face Jake and Sun and Katie, but that way lay dragons, so he turned around again. “It took like six months, maybe, and Scott’s absurd optimism, but then he finally declared his allegiance to Scott. Honestly, I think it was mostly that he decided he wanted a stable pack and to stay in Beacon Hills, and joining Scott was the only way to do that. How do you know so much about all of this, anyway?”

“Packs generally keep track of the surrounding ones to make sure they’re relatively stable and that there won’t be any spill-over from whatever might be going on, as well as to keep track of any omegas that might be passing through. Beacon Hills has been a bit of a black hole in recent years, so we’ve all been staying as far away as we can, but we still hear about what’s going on. And emissaries talk.”

For once, Stiles doesn’t have a response to that (emissaries are fucking assholes, there’s always spillover, why the fuck didn’t you help us when people were dying), and after a second he hears Jake slump back on his bed, groaning. “I have a fucking nine a.m. tomorrow. Who thought that having classes that early was a good idea?”

Stiles snickers, turning around so he can slump down on the edge of his bed. “We went so much earlier in high school. What are you complaining about?”

“I, at least, like sleep.” Jake picks up the pillow and throws it at his head, a touch too strong, and it’s so much like those early times with Scott when he didn’t know how the hell to act human that it makes his chest hurt, just a little.

And then Katie giggles and says, “You’re still shirtless, you know,” and Stiles is abruptly reminded of why sometimes he wishes he was friends with more humans. Because at least humans would have reminded him earlier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have finally figured out where exactly the plot is going, so yay. It might take a little bit to get there, but it will, I promise you.


	6. Chapter 6

Two hours (and too much Adderall) into Stiles’s Basics of Criminology cram session, Sun says, “Jake wanted me to tell you you’re invited to have Christmas with our pack.” And Stiles almost falls out of his chair, though that’s mostly because the room had been dead silent for like three hours and he had kind of forgotten Sun was actually in there.

“Jesus, Sun.” Sun laughed, and suddenly his head was on Stiles’s shoulder, and this time Stiles actually did fall out of the chair, the little fucker. “What the fuck?”

Sun leans down to pat him on the head. “I thought you could use a little excitement. But I mean it; you’re invited to come down with us for Christmas.”

Huh. “That’s…probably not going to happen.”

“Really?” Sun slumps down in Stiles chair which, really? He has his own chair. “That sucks. You sure you can’t come down?”

Stiles shrugs. “I already have plans for Christmas—I’m meeting with Scott and everyone.”

“Scott being Alpha McCall?”

It’s super weird thinking about him that way. “Yeah. He was my friend way before he was ever Alpha or even a werewolf, so he’s just…Scott. Or moron, depending on the day. Anyway, we do the same thing every year, except sometimes things go kind of badly, but we try to get together because Scott’s dad is gone and my mom is dead and we’re basically the only real family we have, so…Christmas.”

“What happened to his dad?” Stiles glares at him until he holds his hands up. “I’m sorry about your mom. But what happened to his dad?”

Stiles props himself up on the side of the desk, knees up, elbows on his kneecaps. The knob is digging into his back, but whatever. It’s really not that uncomfortable. “His dad’s a dick, and he left, and then he came back and continued to be a dick, and then he left again. Why do you care so much about Scott’s dad?”

Sun shrugs. “For werewolves—or at least for born werewolves, I don’t know if this is true for bitten ones—there are some weird instincts when it comes to alphas, even ones that aren’t yours. Weirdly, it probably wouldn’t be as bad if I was in the same room as him, because then the fact that he was another pack would be getting to me more, but just talking to him…it’s complicated and hard to explain.”

“Too difficult for the human to understand?”

Sun throws a pen at Stiles, and apparently it’s not capped, because it draws a long line all the way down Stiles’s cheek before falling into his lap. “What the fuck?”

“Sorry.” Sun picks up another pen and starts chewing on it which is seriously disgusting because Stiles chews on it too and that’s like sharing germs without the kissing which kind of defeats the point of sharing germs. “And I didn’t mean it like that. I just—I honestly don’t know how to explain it.” He throws up his hands. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Christmas. We were talking about Christmas.”

Right. Christmas. “I might be free for New Year’s Eve or something, but not—”

“Cool. Great.” Sun bounds up from the chair, pulling out his phone. “I’ll tell Jake.”

“Shouldn’t you clear it with your alpha or something?”

Sun laughs. “My alpha was the one who suggested it.”

Which is both cool and deeply disturbing at the same time. Glad werewolves all over the world (or at least the state) can manage that equally. “Unless you’re going to jump me again, I have to study for this exam.” Also, his hands are shaking slightly, which means he is still in the adrenaline rush from having jumped off of the chair or he really has taken too much Adderall.

Sun waves a hand from where he is dialing his phone. “Go for it. I have good news to report.”

\--

Stiles calls Lydia two days later, after he’s written eleven pages of his eight page anthro paper, and she picked up after two rings. “I’m in the middle of touching up my lipstick because _someone_ ”—(oh God, who’s in her bed?)—“keeps messing it up. What?”

“I need your advice.”

She sighs. “Is it ‘a guy sucked my dick and I liked it’ advice or ‘we’re all about to die’ advice?”

That’s an interesting distinction—and very Lydia. “Somewhere in between, maybe.”

“Great.” A few snaps. “You, out of my bed. I’m busy.” There are some muffled protests, and then Lydia snaps again and the protests cut off. Because Lydia’s a perfect person, and Stiles is really glad to not still be infatuated with her, because she would still eat him alive, and she _liked_ him. “Okay. Speak.”

Stiles sucked in a deep breath, then said, “MynewfriendsarewerewolvesandIagreedtomeetthepackohGodwhatdoIdo?”

Lydia laughed, and it was a perfect angelic noise (okay, so maybe he was still a little infatuated with her). “Try that again with actual words.”

Right. Words. He’s good with those. “My new friends are werewolves and I agreed to meet the pack. Oh God, what do I do?”

There is a half-second pause, and then Lydia asks, “Is that why you were wearing Derek’s shirts?”

She had noticed? (Of course she had noticed. She’s Lydia Martin.) “Yeah. He and Scott freaked out when I showed up, and then he left me a bunch of shirts on my desk that he ordered me to wear while I was home. How does he have time to do shit like that? Does he have a job or something?”

“Trust fund baby.” Or not a baby, anymore. (Not with abs like those.) “And he’s pursuing his PhD in modern American history.”

“That—” is not what he had been expecting her to say. “Really?”

Stiles can hear the hair flip. “Yes, really. Do you think I would have bad information? Now aht is the advice that you need?”

“No, really, how does that work?”

“Question, Stiles, or I’m hanging up.”

Yes. Question. He can do that. “How to I keep from getting myself killed by the pack or its alpha?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the expert on this?”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t slept in like twenty hours and have consumed enough caffeine to give a heart attack to a horse. Cut me some slack.”

“Is there one of them you want to sleep with?”

(What does that have to do with anything?) “Maybe.”

“Does he want to sleep with you?”

(An even more tentative) “Maybe.”

“Then he’s your way in. Make him like you, maybe throw him a few blow jobs, and you’re golden.”

Jesus. He is pragmatic, but she’s a whole new level of willing-to-do-anything. Not that he can fault her for it. “I’m not going to whore myself out to keep from—whatever they would do to me.”

The sounds of typing start to come through. “Fine, then. Just be yourself—without all the sticking your foot in my mouth.”

“That’s like half of me.”

“Then be half of yourself. I have work to do.” And then she hangs up. Which is just freaking fantastic. Though maybe he should use the opportunity to get some sleep. He’s pretty sure his eyes are shaking.

\--

Scott is on Skype the next day, and Stiles calls him on his left monitor so he can keep working on his psych paper on the right monitor. Multitasking, thy name is Stiles.

“Town status update?”

Scott grins at him like what he just said is the funniest thing ever, which seems to be kind of par for the course for how Scott thinks of Stiles (except when he’s pissed at Stiles for whatever reason, which happens…a lot). Which is honestly really flattering. “We had an omega come through a couple days ago wanting to join the pack.”

“And…?”

A few blinks from Scott, like he had thought the conversation was over. “And what?”

Jesus. “And what did you do? Kill him? Let him join? Leave him for Mr. Argent?”

“We chased him out of the territory.” A hurt look crosses Scott’s face. “We’re not going to kill him just for wanting to join.”

Stiles shrugs. “Yeah, well, there’s a first time for everything. And honestly I’m kind of surprised you didn’t just let him join. You’re such a teddy bear without me around.”

“You weren’t saying that last time I kicked your ass at Call of Duty.”

“Seriously, you’re going to hold the fact that you have magic reflexes against me? What kind of friend are you?”

“One who isn’t going to go easy on you when we—”

The door wings open, and before Stiles can turn to see who it is Jake announces, “You’re getting coffee with me.”

Stiles holds up a finger to Scott, then swivels in his chair (he lives for swively chairs) to look at Jake. “Sun isn’t here.”

Jake rolls his eyes at him, walking over to flop down on Stiles’s bed like that’s a totally normal thing to do (which, okay, given the number of times he’s done it, it kind of is at this point). “I know that. But you’ve been in here for like seven hours straight, and I’m pretty sure you haven’t eaten in that time, so…coffee.”

“Not really a nutritious food group.”

“Who are you talking to?”

Oh. Right. Scott. Stiles swivels back to look at his computer. “Scott, this is Jake. Jake, Scott.”

Jake bounces over to stand behind Stiles, leaning his chin on Stiles’s head (because Jake is a super tactile person and has zero sense of personal space. Like, less than almost any other werewolves Stiles knows. It’s somewhere between awesome and incredibly unnerving). “Scott as in McCall?”

“I know literally zero other Scotts, unless you count that one random Scott in my anthro class, but he goes by Scotty which basically isn’t a real name, so I don’t, so yes, Scott as in McCall.”

Jake makes a “huh”ing noise in his throat. “Nice to meet you, Scott McCall, alpha of the McCall pack.”

Scott’s eyebrows went up. “I’m assuming you’re a werewolf, because otherwise Stiles has missed a few things in our recent conversations.”

“Hey.”

Jake pats Stiles’s shoulder. “I’m a werewolf. My pack is down in SoCal.”

Scott bares his teeth. “If you hurt him, I will rip your throat out.”

“I have no plans to hurt him.”

“Things don’t always go as planned.”

Stiles throws up his hands, shoving away from the computer and from Jake. “If you’re both going to pretend I’m not here, I’m just not going to be here. Remember to log out of my computer when you’re done with your pissing match.”

Jake hurries after him. “Hey, wait up. You’re not getting coffee without me.”

“Call of Duty tomorrow,” Scott calls from the computer.

Right. Their weekly tournament. “As always.”

Jake shoves at Stiles, pushing him towards the door. “Let’s go, come on, I need coffee.”

“Yeah, yeah, stop pushing me.”

There’s a weird growling noise from the computer, but then Jake opens the door and pushes Stiles through, his hand warm (hot, damn that feels good, and he’s gotten so much more touch than before, and he really hopes Jake doesn’t pay attention to his scent or doesn’t have a great sense of smell because sometimes when Jake is being particularly tactile he gets super aroused and tries to hide it but probably fails at least a little bit) and steady, shutting the door behind him and cutting off the sound.

Stiles pulls away because he has at least some dignity and isn’t totally out on the floor (or really at all; he mostly just kind of assumes his friends know and don’t care that he’s really super bi), saying, “I can walk on my own, you know.”

Jake ruffles his hair. “You’re like a little puppy, you know that?”

“Puppy jokes from the—” And there walks Lisa Hartford, so not saying that word.

Jake slings an arm around his shoulders, grinning. “Yep. I have to have my fun some way, don’t I? So anyway. New Years. You should come down by New Year’s Eve, because we have a big party, and then you can stay and come back to school with us.” He pauses. “I mean, you’re welcome to come earlier—you can spend the whole time with us if you want—but Sun mentioned you’re doing Christmas with your friends back home.”

“Your” (no one is around) “alpha isn’t going to have a problem with me being there for that long?”

Jake snorts, though Stiles isn’t sure what’s so funny. “Elizabeth wants to meet you.”

“Elizabeth being…?”

“She’s the alpha you’ll meet there.”

God, it’s like pulling teeth. “Meaning…? Do you have more than one?”

There’s a pause, Jake’s fingers drumming on Stiles’s shoulder, and then he says, “Yeah. We lost our old alpha a couple years ago to disease—it’s rare, but there’s a disease that werewolves, mostly born werewolves, can catch that basically speeds up the metabolism until the body burns itself out. When they died, the leadership passed on to two people simultaneously.”

That was unnervingly familiar. “Like Ethan and Aiden.”

Jake coughs. “Kind of, except there’s no turning into a giant double-wolf.”

“Fair enough. I’ll head down on New Year’s Eve and plan to stay, though if…Elizabeth wants me gone, I’m gone. Stiles is not getting himself killed by an alpha. Or anyone. Stiles is done getting almost killed by people; he has no interest in experiencing the real thing. Well, again, if you count the time I drowned myself.” Jake starts growling, his whole body vibrating against Stiles, and when he tries to pull away, the grip on his shoulders tightens. “It was temporary. Like, super temporary. Clearly, seeing as I’m not dead. You would be able to tell if I was dead. No zombies here.”

“I’m not going to touch that last part, so…why are you referring to yourself in the third person?”

“Fun?”

“Okay.” Jake pokes his side. “You’re not getting kicked out, and you’re not getting killed. I can promise you that. Nobody will touch you.”

“That sounds boring.”

The corner of Jake’s mouth twitches up. “Fine. Nobody will touch you without your permission. Better?”

Stiles grins at him. “Consent is everything.”

He shoves Stiles’s side, pushing him a few feet over because he’s a moronic fucking werewolf who forgets that Stiles is a human. “Screw you.”

Because this is fun, Stiles puts in, “That’s the point, isn’t it?”

Jake’s eyebrows go up, and he takes a step towards Stiles, something changing in his smile. All of a sudden, it’s not a grin anymore; it’s predatory, all white teeth and desire. And maybe this is a bad idea, but Stiles is the king of bad ideas, and he’s already started, so letting it play is probably the best choice. Or at least the most entertaining. He stops in front of Stiles, just a little bit too close for comfort. “You looking for a nice little roll in the hay?”

Stiles makes himself shrug, because now he’s kind of aroused and trying really hard to hide it. “It has been a while.”

Jake’s smirk grows. “Can’t find anyone to scratch that itch, or are you just waiting for the perfect girl to come around?”

“Or guy.” The word sounds choked.

Jake moves even closer, if that’s possible, and Stiles can feel the heat coming off of him. “I was assuming that. But as pretty as you are, I don’t imagine you would have that much trouble finding someone to fall in bed with you, and it’s not like Sun wouldn’t leave if you asked.”

“Pretty?”

“What other word would you use?”

It’s definitely not the first thing that comes to Stiles’s mind when he thinks of himself, but at the moment very little is going through his mind (except holy shit he’s close holy shit he’s hot holy shit he looks like he might kiss him holy shit please don’t fuck up our friendship holy shit holyshitholyshitholyshitholyshit) and then Jake’s lips are against Stiles, hot and hard and a little bit wet, and it feels fucking fantastic, and Stiles gasps because this is not what he expected, and Jake sucks on his lips, hard.

Stiles moans, pulling him closer, his hands going to Jake’s chest, and Jake presses him back against the wall, one hand on his cheek, the other burning against his hip, and one of them is moaning again, and Stiles hasn’t been kissed like this since Malia, except Malia had a tendency to stab him with claws, and she also didn’t have a dick, which kind of mattered, not that Stiles is going to do anything with that dick because they’re just kissing, and it’s hot and wet and—

“Get a fucking room.”

And they’re in the middle of the hallway, and apparently he just outed himself to his entire hallway, so he’s going to go now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So very sorry. (Sterek will prevail, I promise. There will just be a few minor upsets along the way.)
> 
> Hopefully the next chapter will be up within a few days. My second summer class just started and I have an amazing amount of work to do for it, so we will see.


	7. Chapter 7

“I’ll get there when I get there.” Stiles pulls his shoulder up to hold his phone to his ear so he can use both hands to take the (totally absurd) 25 degree turn ahead of him. (Why would they make you go five miles in one direction just to make you turn almost all the way around?)

Katie tsks at him. “Which is _when_?”

He isn’t going to brain himself on his steering wheel. He isn’t. “It’s in like two weeks.”

“You should come here earlier. Jake is getting antsy. He keeps going running without us.”

Ah, yes. Jake. “Are you annoyed that he keeps going running or that he keeps going without you?”

“Without us.” She growls. “What the hell happened between the two of you? He keeps looking really pissed when people mention you. Or horny.” She pauses. “Or both. Mostly both.”

“We kissed. I’m now out to my floor. We had finals. We went home.”

There is a pause. “That’s probably the most succinct I’ve ever heard you be.”

Fine. She wanted to hear about this? She could hear about this. “We kissed, and it was fantastic, and you know what, I don’t really care about being out on my floor because if they don’t like it, fuck them. Well, I won’t fuck them, but inevitably someone will. Unless they don’t want anyone to. Because that’s totally a thing. Did you know that’s a thing? Because it is. But we’re friends, and I’d kind of like to not screw up that friendship, because I apparently am only capable of making friends with not-humans—or, I guess, people who will eventually end up being not-human, because Scott was human when I made friends with him—and I like Jake, but I’m going home now and I’m going to be home so just…let me be home. For a little while. Please.”

She’s silent for a moment, so long that he’s a little worried the call disconnected halfway through his rant and he was just talking to dead air, and then she says, “Yeah, I can do that. Just don’t be surprised if you get a couple…dozen texts from Jake over the next week and a half.”

Stiles feels abruptly ashamed. “Yeah, I mean, texts and everything are fine. I just haven’t see my friends in a while, and I don’t see them much.”

“I get it. Being in college, we don’t get to see our pack all that much, and even with the three of us together, it’s hard, especially on Jake.”

“I get that.” And he does. Stiles knows all about not wanting to drift away, know all about fighting to hold on, and it must be so much harder for werewolves than for humans, because they’re part of a pack. “I have to go. Talk to you later.” And then he hangs up, bringing the Jeep to a stop in front of Scott’s house. They’re not doing the meet at Derek’s thing this time, which honestly he’s kind of glad about; he likes going to Derek’s, probably more than he should, but it’s kind of hard to relax around him when he’s constantly afraid of getting an awkward erection the next time Derek shoves him against a wall, and he really does want to spend time with just Scott. Time like that had gotten hard to come by since Scott had been turned and met Allison and then Kira. Both of whom were awesome people, but they weren’t like just being with Scott.

Scott’s hanging upside down on the ledge, book in hand, when Stiles arrives, and it’s disconcertingly reminiscent of that godawful day that started everything, when he decided it would be a good idea for them to go looking for a dead body in the woods. It was an absolutely moronic idea, leading to what was kind of one of the worst things and kind of one of the best things that had ever happened to them. Because Scott is a _werewolf_ , but Scott is a werewolf.

He flips over and down, landing a few feet in front of Stiles, book tucked under his shoulder. And he _beams_. “You’re back.”

“Yep.”

Scott’s arm wraps around him, pulling him close, and it feels fantastic to have touch like this that isn’t the least bit sexual. And then Scott pulls away, patting him on the shoulder. “Okay. You don’t smell like the other pack.”

“I showered and wore freshly cleaned clothes so you wouldn’t freak out.” Or Derek. Because no more being slammed into walls, please. “You done with animal school for the semester?”

Scott shakes his head, holding up the book, which is…Anatomy of Large Mammals. Fun. “Last final is tomorrow, and then I’m free. So I was thinking, after New Year’s, we could all go up to Seattle, see—”

Shit. “Right. About that.”

Scott’s eyebrows go up. “What?”

“So look, don’t be pissed.” Now Scott looks like he’s about to get pissed, which kind of defeated the point of the whole thing. “Okay, clearly saying that didn’t help anything. So I’m going down to Jake’s—well, Jake’s and Sun’s and Katie’s—pack for New Year’s. Uh, down to SoCal.”

Scott’s eyes flare red, and Stiles jerks away, running into the hood of the Jeep. “Jesus fuck. Okay. Look, I’m assuming you’re not going to, you know, wolf out on my, but seriously, calm down.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“One, I can take care of myself, and two, they’re not going to hurt me.”

Scott clearly struggles with himself for a second, jaw working, and then he sucks in a deep breath and relaxes, shoulders dropping. “Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That’s fine.”

“I’m not asking for your permission.”

He laughs. “Yeah, I know. Hard habit to break. I’m the alpha; it’s kind of a full-time job.”

“Totally get it.” Sort of. (Not really.) “Okay. Five hour Call of Duty marathon?”

Scott jabs him in the chest with the book which, ow, seriously, that hurt. “Tomorrow. I have studying to do.”

Right. Studying. So glad he’s done with that. “Fine. Just tell me—when’s everyone getting back? Well, discounting Liam, who I assume is still here, unless you killed him or something. And Isaac? Is Isaac coming back? What’s up with Isaac, by the way?”

Scott doesn’t seem intimidated by Stiles’s outpouring of babbling, which is kind of par for the course for him and also one of the reasons Stiles loves him. Because he knows him well enough to never have to ask. “Lydia’ll be back Sunday” (which Stiles actually knew, because he talks to her every week and a half or so) “and despite her mother’s best efforts, Jackson is _not_ coming back.”

“Thank God.”

A laugh. “Yeah, no kidding. I think Mrs. Martin wants him to get back together with her or something. Nobody really understands it. Kira will be back on Monday, and Malia’s…home, I think. She’s mostly hanging out at home, and she comes home a lot anyway, so it’s hard to tell whether or not she’s actually back. And Isaac is coming home; he’s supposed to get back the twenty-third. I guess coming back made him want to be here more.”

“He didn’t seem to want to be here when he was here. What was up with that, anyway?”

Scott turns, dropping down next to Stiles against the hood of the Jeep. “It’s—I asked him about it when he was here last time, and he said he’s doing better in France but that being back here brought everything back.”

“Why would we want to come back, then?”

Scott shrugs. “We’re pack. One way or another, I think being with us helps him.”

Huh. “Okay. So we’re doing a big pack thing Christmas Eve, right?”

“Lydia was actually hoping the pack thing could be a few days later; apparently her mother’s on her about doing something family-y day-of.”

“Family-y?” Scott shoves him to the side, and Stiles shoves back, and they start laughing because it’s like old times, _good_ old times, when nobody’s being attacked or killed and made into killers. “Anyway, that works for me, as long as we do it before New Year’s Eve. It’ll be like a six hour drive, so I want to leave early.”

“We’ll plan it for the thirtieth.”

The thirtieth. He can do that, and more than that, it means he’ll get to see all of them right before he leaves, so he’ll have the shortest possible amount of time before next seeing them, because God, he misses them sometimes. “Yeah. Good.” Scott still looks kind of grumpy, probably about the whole Stiles-leaving-early thing, so he adds, “This isn’t me deserting you, you know? I’m not leaving the pack behind to go cavort with some other pack of werewolves. I just…they’re my friends, too, and they invited me.” And now he sounds kind of defensive, but whatever. He’s allowed to be defensive.

Scott touches his shoulder. “Yeah, I know.”

“Cool. So, Liam giving you any shit?” He had grown out of his afraid-of-hurting-people stage and was now a confident less-douchey-but-still-kind-of-arrogant-sometimes Jackson. Without the being a giant lizard. Or the being shitty to his girlfriend. Mostly because he doesn’t have a girlfriend.

Yay for Stiles not being the only single one.

Scott snorts. “He keeps asking me how to have sex without having his fingernails or teeth shift.”

Apparently Stiles is the only single one. Well, discounting Malia. And Derek. But they barely count as people. And Lydia goes through her serial monogamy, so she doesn’t actually count as single.

“How’s that going?”

“His pillow apparently looks like it was attacked by a bear.”

“His pillow? What’s he doing with his pillow?” Scott blinks at him, and about fifteen seconds too late Stiles realizes what a stupid question that was. “Never mind. Okay. Moving on.”

Scott looks back at the Jeep. “So, what did you get me for Christmas?”

Stiles shoves him, and Scott lets himself be pushed a few steps, laughing. “Nope. Not telling. You’ll find out on Christmas Eve, and not a day sooner.”

\--

Derek shows up in his bedroom two days later, heralded by a rush of cold air because _they might live in California but it’s fucking cold out in December_. _Goddamn it_. Stiles is mentally prepared for him, or at least mentally prepared enough that he doesn’t shriek and fall out of his chair onto the floor, hitting his funny bone and sending shooting pain-tingles through his arm (okay, so maybe he isn’t quite so mentally prepared).

“You alive down there?”

Stiles shoot him the middle finger, then scrambles up, rubbing his elbow even though he knows (from too much experience) that it’s going to help. “What do you want?”

Derek leans against the windowsill, smirking at him. “You’re back.”

Stiles wants to sit, but he’s not going to do that while Derek is standing there, so he stays standing, arms crossed across his chest. “Astute observation, Einstein.”

“And you don’t smell like that pack.” A smug little smile crosses his face. “Alienate them already?”

“No. I just did my laundry before coming home.” Something really weird crosses Derek’s face at that, almost like happy but way more nuanced like that, but then it’s gone. “Disappointed you can’t foist any more shirts on me?”

“Hardly,” Derek scoffs. “I actually came to tell you you owe me a shirt. You took it with you when you went back to school.”

Right. Shit. That was…sitting on his desk, so Stiles would remember to bring it back with him. Whoops. “Yeah, sorry about that. I’ll ship it to you once I get back to school.”

Derek examines him for a moment, so long that Stiles has to fight the urge to look down and check to make sure he’s wearing all of his clothing correctly (because, okay, that one time he went to school with his pants on backwards, that wasn’t his fault. It had been a long month). And then he shakes his head. “Don’t waste the money. You can bring it back during spring break or whenever you’re next coming home.” And then he turns and slips back out the window, leaving it open (the dick) behind him.

So that was really weird. (Which, to be fair, is kind of the story of his life.)

\--

Christmas Eve is one of Stiles’s favorite days of the year. It may actually _be_ his favorite day of the year, because it’s like his birthday but he gets to give people presents too, and he gets to see (almost) all of his favorite people, and it has nothing to do with werewolves or demon foxes or banshee or anything trying to kill anyone.

And if it reminds him of his mom (perfume and hospitals and dying), he’s going to get his crying done with early and then not think about it (her) for the rest of the day. It’s a tried and true method, and he’s not one to stray from the classics.

Then at noon he scrambles to finish wrapping his family/Scott/Mrs. McCall presents, because they get their presents on Christmas Eve (while everyone else gets their presents during the pack party and as such can have their presents wrapped in like three days. Or five. Whatever), which is surprisingly difficult to do because nothing is a square. Or a rectangle. But newspaper will cover anything if you try hard enough and have enough tape, so he makes it work. Mostly.

After that, he starts on researching phoenixes, because it’s always worth it to try to add to the bestiary, and their information on phoenixes is currently basically “sometimes they catch fire and survive it, or maybe they just can survive fire, or maybe they’re brought back to life by fire, or maybe they’re just a myth,” which is going to be super unhelpful if a phoenix ever shows up. And Lydia will be home, so they can collate their work on the bestiary over something a little more conducive to it than Skype.

There’s some pretty interesting Chinese mythology on them, complete with words he doesn’t know (he really should try to learn Chinese at some point. And French. And Latin. And Greek. And Gaelic), and they might be the same as hou-ous (wow, nice job, Pokemon) and firebirds and a whole bunch of other things. But there is also the roc mythology, and they could be the same as rocs, because who knows if there are that many different real mythological giant birds.

Jake texts him a while (three hours, maybe, shh) in, with _Merry Christmas. Mistletoe is poisonous. Burn it immediately._

Grinning, Stiles sends back _Have to entertain myself somehow, don’t I?_

_No. Never._

_But then how will I convince my hot friends to kiss me?_

_You don’t. Become a monk._

Stiles laughs. _Like that’s going to happen. Anyway, werewolf friend here. No mistletoe. No killing friends._

There’s a pause, and then Jake sends _House home?_ (which is probably supposed to be “how’s home, though given Jake, Stiles isn’t really sure.)

_Room fucking cold. Friends awesome. Real food. You?_

_Gloriously warm._ (And then there’s a picture of a palm tree which, really? A palm tree? Who the hell has palm trees in winter?)

_Fuck yo—_

“Who are you texting?”

Stiles screams and topples out of his chair, which is seriously starting to become a trend, and also, ow. “Motherfucker.” And look, just like fucking usual, Derek is standing near his window. “What the hell are you doing in my room?”

Derek crosses his arms across his chest. “Who are you texting?”

“Jake.” A growl, which Stiles ignores. “What are you doing in my room?”

“Merry Christmas.”

Okay, that was not what Stiles was expecting, and he pauses halfway to standing, which immediately becomes a bad idea when his legs start telling him that now is not the time to be doing squats. His phone buzzes in his hand, but he ignores it. “Merry Christmas to you, too. You couldn’t wait to see me on the thirtieth to say that?”

Derek shrugs his broad (luscious, and he really should not be thinking that word in relation to Derek) shoulders. “It’s not Christmas, then.”

“Right. Okay. Well, you’re not getting your present till then either way, so don’t you even try it.”

Surprise crosses his face, then happiness, and then he finally seems to settle on mild disdain. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Well, good.” What the hell else is there to say to the weirdo werewolf standing in his bedroom? “You are coming to the thing on the thirtieth, right?”

“It’s in my apartment, so it’s more a matter of not leaving, then actively going.”

“Which is a yes, right?” Stiles wants everyone there, and Derek is part of everyone. And he also…wants Derek there. Like, independently of just the collective. Which is weird to think about. So he’s not going to. Nope. Stopping. Now.

Derek sighs. “Yes, Stiles. That’s a yes.” He turns to leave, then stops. “Merry Christmas, Stiles.”

Didn’t they just do this? “Merry Christmas, Derek.”

Derek wants to say more (which is totally weird for Derek, the wolf who doesn’t like to talk, and also Stiles is not totally sure how he knows that, but he does), but Stiles’s phone vibrates again, and then again, and finally he looks down at it to see what the hell is so important, and when he looks back up, Derek is gone.

Because why not. But right now he has more pressing things to worry about, like convincing Jake he didn’t die halfway through typing a message.

They head over to Scott’s at five, because he has orders to help Scott put up a tree (because apparently those heathens wait until Christmas Eve to put up a tree, while Stiles has had their fake one up since the day after he got home, tinsel and tacky ornaments and all), and his dad is going to start drinking with Mrs. McCall. Which Stiles is honestly okay with, because his dad has been a lot better about drinking recently, and because it’s Christmas.

And because they both miss his mom, no matter that his dad took his wedding ring off a while ago, and while Stiles is up for having a good cry in the bathroom, Sherriff Stilinski generally isn’t.

“So,” Stiles starts while they’re in the process of stringing up the fifteen pounds of lights Scott keeps in his attic, “do you have any idea what’s going on with Derek?”

Scott looks at him. “I didn’t know anything was going on with Derek. He’s actually been remarkably…”

“Less serial killer-y?”

Scott shrugs. “Not how I was going to put it, but yeah. Why? What’s going on?”

“He showed up in my bedroom today. To wish me merry Christmas.”

Scott looks baffled, which is totally the correct response, because the whole thing is baffling. “That is really weird.” He sighs. “I can tell him to back off if you want. Not that he’s particularly good at…listening to me, but if it’s really bothering you, I can try.”

Stiles thinks about that, imagines Derek never showing up randomly in his room with arbitrary words of wisdom or demands, and finds he doesn’t particularly like that end result. It seems...lonely, somehow, even though he’s almost never home and so he almost never sees Derek. But losing the little bit of time he sees him feels worse, somehow, even though he doesn’t particularly like Derek. Not really. (Other than thinking he’s hot, but you’d have to be blind to not acknowledge that he’s at least aesthetically very pretty. In a rugged sort of way.)

So he shakes his head and says, “No, it’s fine. It’s weird, but harmless.”

Scott looks like he wants to respond, but he has managed to get himself tangled in the lights (how he has managed to not kill himself yet, Stiles doesn’t know), and so his attention is (rightfully) focused on that instead of on Stiles’s slight…wolf problem.

Dinner is served an hour later, consisting of a giant ham; about five pounds of mashed potatoes; something that looked approximately like weird cranberry jelly from a can, still in can shape (which Stiles is not getting near with a five foot fork), carrots, green beans, and…fruitcake (the only thing that is a new addition to their tradition).

So Stiles can’t help himself; he has to ask, “What’s with the fruitcake?”

Mrs. McCall takes one look at it and sighs. “One of the new nurses, Alice, gave it to me yesterday, and I didn’t have the heart to throw it out because she made it herself, so I figured if I put it on the table with the rest of the dinner, someone would forget that it’s fruitcake and try eating it. At which point I would feel validated in telling Alice that we ate it.”

“I thought people gave fruitcakes with the assumption that they’re going to be used as a doorstop.”

“I guess not if they made it themselves.”

There’s silence as they all contemplate the fruitcake in their midst, and then Scott reaches towards it. “What the hell”—a glance towards his mother—“heck. It can’t be too bad.”

It is too bad. It is so bad Scott actually gets up, walks to the kitchen, and spits it out in the sink, then washes his mouth out. Twice. And then he comes back, coughing, to say, “I think your nurse doesn’t know the difference between salt and sugar.”

“Oh, boy.” Mrs. McCall grabs the fruitcake and stands, saying, “We’ve tried it; now I can tell her without feeling bad.”

“You’re not going to tell her about the salt?”

A laugh comes from the kitchen. “She has six inches and probably fifty pounds on me. I think I’ll pass.”

Which makes sense.

\--

Replete with good food and better company, Stiles stumbles into his bedroom just after midnight. He could have stayed with Scott, but Kira is apparently coming over way earlier than Stiles is willing to drag himself out of bed, so that’s not happening.

Stripping down to his boxers and kind of throwing his clothing approximately towards where laundry is supposed to go, he flops down face-first on his bed—

—nearly impaling himself in the eye with whatever stupid hard thing is sitting on his pillow. Whatever it is, it doesn’t look poisonous and it doesn’t look deadly, so he’ll deal with it in the morning.

And with that decision made, Stiles drops off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is...maybe not quite canon divergent yet (but inevitably it will be).
> 
> So I've figured out some more about what the story is going to look like. Basically, it will be three parts, and I will be adding tags probably once I get to part 2, which will be at probably somewhere around chapter 12 or so (a totally guess, so don't hold me to that).


	8. Chapter 8

“It’s the thirtieth!”

Stiles moans and shoves his face deeper into his pillow, which does slightly less than nothing to get Scott’s voice to be less loud. “Why are you in my room?”

“I’m not in your room.”

That is impossible. “Then how are you shouting into my ear?”

Scott laughs, which is entirely unnecessary and too loud. “I’m not. It’s called a phone.”

Phones. Yes. Those things. One of which is apparently pressed up against his ear. Because he is now answering phones in his sleep. Which isn’t quite sleep-calling, because sleep-calling would entail making the call, as opposed to answering the call. Unless he made the call. “Was I the one who called you?”

“No. What’s up with you?”

“I was reading about kelpies until five in the morning.”

A pause. “It’s seven.”

“Very astute observation, Scott.”

“I’m going to let you get some more sleep.”

“Good plan.” Stiles is asleep before Scott finishes saying goodbye.

The next time he wakes up, the sun is streaming through the window, and Stiles feel more like an actual human being, one hand closed around his phone, the other around a spiky wooden thing. The same spiky wooden thing he’s been waking up clutching for days (and not even the one he thought his hand would be around).

His dad is at work, so he has the house to himself, which means he breaks out the hidden bacon and makes some for himself. Because he’s going to be at school for a while, and being at school means no real food. Or no good food, at least. At the rate he’s going there, he’s going to drive himself to a heart attack before he graduates (though, if he’s being honest, that’s probably not going to be what kills him).

But he deserves bacon.

They’re all getting together to have a mass pack party at noon to watch movies, eat food, and exchange presents. It’s something they started senior year and hoped to continue even if everyone moved away. Not that people were necessarily going to move away, other than Isaac and maybe Lydia, who’s probably not going to be able to get her Fields Medal from Beacon Hills.

Liam is still a little bit of a wild card; he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, so they don’t know what he’s going to do with his life. Which means he might stay in Beacon Hills, but he might not, and Scott is trying to make it clear that he’s under no obligation to. Which is only half working; according to Scott, he keeps oscillating between wanting to never leave and wanting to run as far as possible to get out from under the ‘oppressive pack structure’. But he’s strong and his control is light-years ahead of where it was a year ago, and he’s actually a good person even if sometimes he drives Stiles up the wall.

Scott calls at eleven with a tentative, “You awake yet?”

Around a mouthful of bacon and biscuits from a can (because he can) (and they are baked after they’re taken from the can; they don’t come prebaked in a can, though that would actually be kind of awesome, unless they were dry like box-cookies), Stiles says, “Yeah. I’ll be over in an hour. You need me to bring anything?”

“Popcorn.”

Stiles could do that. “How much?”

“It’s four werewolves, a kitsune, a werecoyote, Lydia, and you. How much do you think?”

“Good point.” He he’ll buy a dozen bags to be popped; with the rest of the food that’ll be there, that should be enough. “Okay, I’ll stop by the store before I head over to your place.”

There’s a pause. “Oh yeah, so about that. My mom apparently isn’t working today and is not super thrilled about the pack converging on our house, so we’re all crashing Derek’s place.”

Wow. Okay. “Has Derek been…informed of this fact, or are we all going to just show up and hope he does throw us out windows?”

Scott laughs. “He knows. I think he’s really trying to be, you know…packly.”

“Packly?”

“Being involved, taking part in stuff. Not throwing people out windows.”

Huh. “A new Derek.”

“Something like that.” Something beeps in the background, and then Stiles hears some creative swearing from what sounds like Kira. “Okay, I have to go. See you in an hour.”

“See you then.”

Stiles gets to Derek’s place ten minutes early with two dozen bags of popcorn and a cake (what, it was on sale), which he deposits on Derek’s counter (he has a counter and a kitchen, like a real kitchen, and it’s weird) before hauling his shopping bag full of presents into the living room. Where there is what looks like someone thought could pass as a tree but isn’t really a tree. And it’s purple.

“What the hell happened to your…monstrosity?”

Derek looks up from the book (textbook? What the hell) he’s reading, then looks over at it. “Malia dragged it in three days ago. Arguing didn’t seem worth the effort.”

Arguing would probably have been worth the effort, but whatever. Derek wants a purple disaster in his living room? He can have a purple disaster in his living room. “Okay. Where should I put the presents?”

Derek waves a dismissive hand. “Wherever. By the tree. I don’t care.”

“It’s not a tree.”

He almost smiles. “The plastic slug masquerading as a cactus, then.”

That is a…surprisingly accurate description of what was in the corner of the room, actually. Stiles bounds over, skirting around the table, chairs, and what looks like small mountain of textbooks off to one side, and distributes the presents around the slug-cactus, then turns—

And almost runs into Isaac, who’s standing like five inches behind him. “What the hell, dude? Why do werewolves keep doing this to me?”

Isaac laughs, throwing an arm around him. “It was too good an opportunity to pass up. It’s so much more entertaining dealing with humans who can’t hear me coming.”

“Glad I could entertain you.” Stiles pulls away just enough so that he can look at Isaac. “You look good. Better than—”

“Over Thanksgiving?” Isaac shrugs. “Yeah, me and family meals don’t go together very well, apparently. Pack, though—Pack is what keeps me centered, and, uh, because Derek was the one who changed me, it helps.” He says Pack like it needs a capital letter, which seems oddly ritualistic for, well, him, but he also does seem a lot calmer now than he had a month earlier, so whatever helped. “You look…basically the same, actually.”

Stiles grins at him. “That’s because you can’t see my rippling abs.”

“You have abs?” Derek puts in disdainfully from his place on the couch, and Stiles fights the urge to stick his tongue out as Isaac starts laughing.

Instead, he puts his hands on his hip, saying, “I’ll have you know that I have excellent muscles, thank you very much,” because he has basically no self-control and can’t help engaging whenever stuff like this happens.

Derek rolls his eyes, finally putting the book down. “Right. I’ll believe that when I see it.” And Stiles’s hands go to the hem of his shirt because, again, not one to back away from a challenge. Because he’s a moron, and Derek grimaces at him. “Please don’t. I’d rather not go blind from the paleness of your skin.”

“Screw you.”

Derek smirks at him because he’s a dick, but then the door opens and Malia flounces in, asking, “Can we start the party now?”

Liam shows up next with a bag of presents along with six packages of cookies and with a cake (it’s on sale) and deposits his food in the kitchen and his presents next to Stiles’s. His look like they were wrapped by someone who owns wrapping paper (as opposed to Stiles’s), and most of them are actually box-shaped. Malia has some…something in a bag, and Isaac is apparently hoarding his upstairs. Derek may or may not have presents for people; he’s currently in the middle of ignoring everyone in favor of playing with his phone. Which, like, really? It’s a party. Have a party.

Lydia is there precisely on time, looking absurdly attractive, which is somehow kind of a relief because it feels so fucking much like normal it’s amazing. Not that all of this doesn’t feel pretty normal (for him), but this is, like, really normal. Happy normal, and nobody is dying, and something about it (normality in the midst of so much normality that isn’t quite normal) makes him want to cry.

But he does have enough self-control not to, and so he just throws his arms around her and lets her press a lipstick-y kiss on his cheek. She does the same to Isaac, sort of smiles at Liam and Malia, and doesn’t quite scowl at Derek, which is…something.

And then she spots the slug-cactus and stalks over to it in her fantastic heels, hands planted on her hips. “What the hell is that?”

Malia walks over, peering at it with undisguised glee. “It’s a Christmas tree.”

Lydia looks at the slug-cactus, then at Malia, then back at the slug-cactus. “That’s nowhere near a Christmas tree, darling. I think you were away from civilization a little too long.”

Malia shrugs like that wasn’t a totally tactless thing to say. “My dad’s Christmas tree is metal. This one is plastic. I’m not sure what the difference is.”

That is the most amazingly Malia statement Stiles has ever heard, except maybe when she offered to torture that guy. But he’s not going to be the one to tell her that her logic is super flawed, because he’d really rather she not impale him with her claws. Been there, done that, doesn’t need another hole poked in his dick, because that one was super hard to explain to the hospital.

Lydia, on the other hand, looks like she wants to answer, but then the door opens again and Scott and Kira walk in, and Derek actually stands up for the first time since the whole shindig started, walking over to put his book down on his mountain.

Scott and Kira both have a shitton of presents that they intermix with the ones already there, and Isaac and Derek seem to take that as a signal, because they both go get their own presents to put around the slug-cactus, making it start to seem like an actual Christmas party.

They also brought cake because, “It was on sale.”

They end up sprawled around the living room with six bowls (to start) of popped popcorn and about a dozen other assorted snacks (and two cakes; they’re saving the third for the evening), all of them facing vaguely in the direction of the television. Scott is in one chair with Kira draped across him; Lydia has claimed the other; and Malia, Liam, and Isaac sprawl on the floor, leaving Stiles and Derek on the couch, sitting about as far away from each other as they can get while still being on the same piece of furniture.

Scott turns to look at them. “Any thoughts on what to watch?”

“Christmas movies.”

They all look at Malia, who is grinning, and then Lydia snorts. “I grew out of watching Christmas movies when I was about four. Someone pick something else.”

Liam suggests horror movies, which are a bad idea for way more reasons than Stiles wants to list; Kira suggests action films (go her); and then Stiles says, “Star Wars.”

There’s a pause, and then Scott shrugs. “Sounds good to me.”

And that apparently settles it, because everyone looks at Derek, who makes a sort of aborted shoulder movement. “They’re over there.” And then he makes a similar sort of aborted chin gesture towards a cabinet under the television, and both Isaac and Liam hop up to go towards it.

And then they have a really entertaining five-second staring contest that ends in Liam sitting back down and Isaac heading over to the cabinet. He opens it, peers into it for a second, then turns and asks, “Which one are we starting with?”

Lydia scoffs, “I am not sitting through the prequels. We’re starting at Episode Four like reasonable people.”

And apparently (unsurprisingly) Lydia’s word is law just as much as Scott’s is, because nobody argues. Isaac puts the DVD in (Derek has DVDs and a DVD player and it’s just so different from how he used to be and maybe he really is changing) and starts the movie then heads back to his spot on the floor, and they all settle in to watch.

Sometime in, just when Stiles is starting to get antsy, Derek slings his arm around the back of the couch, and it feels like something lands on the back of Stiles’s neck, but when he moves it’s just his shirt’s tag.

And then, lulled by the sounds of the movie and his friends and still tired as hell from the night before, Stiles drifts to sleep, warmed by the weight on the back of his neck.

\--

“He looks so…poofy.” Something bats at his hair, and he tries to hit it away, but his hand won’t work right. Why are people talking? Why is there talking? He just wants to sleep. "Ooh, what’s that?” And then a hand grabs at his shirt, the chain underneath it, pulling it out, and he launches himself up and away from them because that is not touching he was expecting.

Hands catch him, hold him, and he manages to pry his eyes open as he’s deposited back on the couch. Scott is in front of him, looking worried, and Malia is off to the side, Kira somewhere behind them.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” Stiles blinks at Scott. “Yeah, sorry. Didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

Scott shakes his head. “Whatever. We’re about to open presents.”

“We’re done with Star Wars?” Has he really been asleep for that long? It doesn’t feel like that long.

“Nah. Got through the first one and then Malia decided she couldn’t wait for presents.”

Figures. “Okay.” Stiles claps his hands. He is so ready for presents. “Here’s the plan. Everyone, grab a random present that you didn’t bring, and then we’re going to have everyone hand it to the person it’s supposed to go to.”

Silence, and then Malia blinks at him. “Why?”

“Because why not.”

This, they quickly learn, is just about the least efficient way of giving out presents, but they do it anyway (because why not), and eventually they all end up with the presents they’re supposed to have.

Liam gets mostly lacrosse stuff, because that’s like 95% of his life. Isaac gets a couple of boring things, a French-English dictionary from Derek (which is also a boring thing), a long French novel from Lydia, and the promised stuffed wolf from Stiles (“Really?” “You’re welcome.” “Thank you, but _really_?”). Lydia gets makeup from Kira, some weird things from other people, a math textbook from Derek, and a promised complaint-free shopping trip from Stiles (with Lydia paying for everything because Stiles is kind of a poor college student who sells class notes to make money). Malia gets Christmas ornaments from the pack (because apparently that’s what she asked for), a promise of a makeup lesson from Lydia, and a sweatshirt with a wolf on it from Stiles (because he couldn’t think of anything). Kira gets some chocolate, a lightbulb from Scott (because this wasn’t his real gift to her, which was something that Stiles refused to hear about but apparently included whipped cream), a stuffed fox from Isaac, and some other random stuff.

Apparently nobody knew what to get Derek, because his gifts consist of a pair of socks (Isaac, and Stiles really doesn’t want to know), a cat toy (Kira, go her), chocolate (Malia, because apparently that’s her go-to thing when she doesn’t know what to give someone), a DVD of “An American Werewolf in London” (Liam, and that actually is pretty funny), a textbook on the First Gulf War (Lydia, and…okay), a deck of cards (Scott, who likely legitimately had no idea what to give him), and a self-help book on how to be less grumpy (Stiles, and because he likes to piss Derek off, and because Derek really needs to be less grumpy).

Scott gets some random things from Lydia and most of the pack, something cutesy from Kira, and from Stiles, “Werewolf erotica?”

Stiles grins at him as the room erupts into laughter. Even Derek is smiling, and it’s not even that ‘I’m going to rip out your spleen and then make you eat it’ smile he’s so fond of. It’s a miracle.

And from Derek, Stiles gets…a shirt. Not even like a shirt with something on it. Just a plain black t-shirt. Which (in his not so humble opinion) trumps everything else everyone (including him) gets in terms of weirdness.

Stiles slumps back on the couch after presents have been opened, newspaper and wrapping paper crumpling around him, and everything feels…right. Like this is how it’s supposed to be, the pack and friends together and happy and safe, with nobody trying to hurt them or kill them or do anything to them.

Even Derek looks happy.

They watch the fifth (second?) Star Wars movie, and Stiles actually stays awake for this entire one. It’s not his favorite of the six (though it’s light-years [ha] ahead of the third—the prequel third), but it’s good, and Derek’s muttered comments (“What moron thought up these battle plans?” “How the hell do they fuel these ships”) make it totally worth it.

Also, Derek generates a surprisingly absurd amount of heat. Like, space heater level heat. Which is probably at least part of the reason Stiles fell asleep last time. And from what Stiles can tell (from all his extensive experience) it’s a born werewolf thing, because Scott runs a little hot, but not _this_ hot. If he lived with Stiles, he would never need to heat his house. Think of how much money he would save.

Probably not a good thing to think about.

Not thinking about it.

Except he really is warm.

They get through the fifth-second movie without a hitch, and then the werewolves look like they’re about to chew their way through Derek’s furniture (and wouldn’t Stiles pay to see that) so they order pizza and start on the sixth-third, which brings them up to like seven p.m., at which point Isaac breaks out Trivia Pursuit (Lydia is for once overruled; nobody wants to face her at Risk except Stiles, and that’s only because he’s a masochist) and they play until Stiles kicks everyone’s ass. Twice.

Though, oddly, Derek held his own in everything except sports and entertainment. Apparently he has never seen Jurassic Park. Or Harry Potter. Or football.

Though that still beats Scott, who apparently doesn’t know that the capital of Kuwait is Kuwait City.

At ten, Malia stretches out on the floor in front of the game board, flicking the dice absently. “Can we all crash here?”

Everyone looks at Scott, even Derek, which is honestly kind of weird because it is Derek’s house, and after a second Scott shrugs. “If Derek’s okay with it, I don’t see why not.” And then he frowns at Stiles. “Wait, don’t you have to leave really early tomorrow?”

Shit. Yes. “Possibly.” He’s supposed to leave at like seven because, given the traffic, it’s going to take for-fucking-ever to actually get down to where they live. “I also haven’t packed, which I should probably do before…tomorrow.”

Now all of the eyes are on him, but Scott is talking again (thank God for overprotective alpha dad!Scott). “If you have any problems, call someone. Well, not Liam. Or Isaac. Or Malia. But anyone else.”

Liam looks immediately affronted, which is pretty entertaining, because Stiles is like ninety percent sure he doesn’t actually know what he’s affronted about. “I can help.”

“Yes, but I don’t think your parents would be too happy with you driving seven—eight?—hours.”

Lydia, who is examining her nails, announces, “Don’t call me.”

Scott (to his credit) doesn’t throw up his hands like he so obviously wants to. “Okay, if you have any problems, call me or Derek.”

“I won’t have any problems.”

But Derek clearly isn’t okay with that answer. “Where are you going?”

Oh, fantastic. Now he has to have this conversation. Maybe he should have just not told Scott. Except of course he told Scott; he couldn’t really have not told Scott. “Jake’s alpha invited me to do New Year’s Eve with them, so…that’s what I’m doing.”

Derek _lunges_ at him, pinning him with a hand around Stiles’s neck like when he used to shove Stiles against walls, except Stiles is now horizontal, and Derek is horizontal, and there’s a lot of horizontal going on as Derek growls, “You’re not going.”

Stiles isn’t that scared kid who used to be afraid of alpha Derek (kind of), so he shoves back, which does absolutely nothing. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

Derek stares down at him for a long (long, long, long) second, eyes glowing blue, and then he lifts up one hand to yank the chain out of Stiles’s shirt, pulling out the little wooden wolf Stiles found on his bed a couple of days ago. And then he looks at Stiles again like it’s supposed to _mean_ something, but he doesn’t know what, and it’s fucking frustrating.

So he shoves again, snapping, “Get the fuck off of me.”

And Derek does, though that seems to be more because Scott is bodily lifting him off of Stiles than because of any work on Derek’s part, and Stiles scrambles to his feet, gathers his presents (except the shirt; Derek can keep it, the asshole), and stalks out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone talk me out of coming up with more details of my idea of a Teen Wolf/Hawaii Five-0/NCIS:LA cross-over (because I really should not write that).


	9. Chapter 9

It takes until two hours into the drive through California for Stiles to get over being pissed off at Derek. Because in the grand scheme of things, what Derek did was kind of not that big a deal compared to the overarching scope of all of the things ever having been done by Derek. And it’s not worth being angry over it, because, well, it’s Derek. It’s weird, grumpy, creepy, (unfairly) attractive Derek, and being pissy is kind of his MO.

And the thing is that, no matter how pissy Derek gets, he’s (almost) always there when he needs to be (and sometimes when he doesn’t).

So Stiles isn’t angry. He mostly just wants to get down to SoCal without his car falling apart or dying. And without being attacked by anything (because scary things seem to follow him, or he follows them, and he honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he’s attacked by a troll or a vampire or a goddamn water sprite just because he happens to be there).

But the good thing about having been pissed at Derek when he left was that he was extra careful to scrub all of what’s probably Derek’s scent off of him and to wear all actually-washed clothes. Plus the wooden wolf. But that’s just because he likes the wolf. It’s cute.

But his car doesn’t catch fire (again, though to be fair, that did only happen once before, and he’s pretty sure it’s at least partially the fault of the small woodland creature they were chasing at the time), and he makes it to Jake’s neighborhood, which is that weird combination of suburban and rural where there were houses interspersed with almost enough trees to count as woods.

If Jake’s address (and Stiles’s GPS) is correct, his pack’s house is a giant mansion at the end of a cul-de-sac, which is pressed up right against the woods, which makes sense for a pack of werewolves. Also there are like two dozen cars in front of it, so there’s definitely a party going on. A werewolf party. In hindsight (during-sight?), this may not actually be the most intelligent idea. But on the other hand, Stiles isn’t known for his self-preserving ideas, so…party-ho.

The door is has a sign on it when he gets to it (parking on the street six houses down and hoping like hell he doesn’t get ticketed or towed or something equally absurd), and he sheds his coat (because it’s fucking warm here) as he reads it. “Come in if invited. Otherwise stay out.”

Well, that’s blunt.

He was invited, though, so…entering. Yeah. That’s a thing that’s going to happen. Soon. Once he calms down enough that it’ll be okay for him to walk into a house full of werewolves (which was not helping, not helping, should not keep thinking about that).

Okay. He’s good. He’s super good. He’s so good he’s about to chew his way through the pad of his thumb, but he has band-aids in his pocket because he spends a lot of time bleeding, so it’s all okay.

And with that, he takes in a deep breath and pushes open the door, to find—

Werewolves. A fuckton of werewolves. Everywhere. Sprawled across couches, standing around drinking from red plastic cups (are those really a thing? He thought they only existed in TV shows), chatting. Or…no longer chatting, but staring at him. All of them. Holy fuck. Hopefully these really were werewolves and not…homophobes with really good gaydars (bidars? Is that a thing?) (Also not a thought he would ever be having: hopefully these are werewolves).

Apparently they’re all going to just stare at him, so he walks up to one who looks particularly non-threatening (early twenties, baby face, jeans and a Naruto sweatshirt) and says, “Hi. I’m Sun’s roommate. Could you point me towards” (Elizabeth? What is he supposed to call her?) “the alpha? I want to make check in with them first to make sure they know I’m here so I don’t step on anyone’s toes.” Something almost like respect crosses Naruto-dude’s face, and then he jerks his thumb towards a room to the right. “Thanks.”

And then he heads in the supposed direction of the alpha. Someone in the next room points him towards another room without him having to ask (because super-hearing and werewolves and God, he hopes he’s not the only human in this building), and that room opens up to the largest freaking room he’s ever seen; it’s like a ball room, but with a shit ton of couches and squishy stuff and food and people looking happy and actually kind of ignoring him (probably) because they’ve already heard what’s going on and don’t care anymore because he doesn’t smell like another pack or like wolfsbane and so he’s not a threat to them.

He finds another less-threatening-looking person, who looks him over, grins, and says, “Couch,” and then points to one of the half-dozen couches in the room.

Which, Stiles sees when he gets close enough, has three people on it. Jake, Katie, and…a guy. Unless he isn’t a guy. Maybe she is a trans girl who just isn’t transitioning or isn’t for whatever reason passing. Or he is a trans guy who is using his birth name. Or they are non-binary and look stereotypically male but use a female name, or—

Or Jake is waving him over, and he should ask Jake instead of deciding things about the person sitting on the couch next to him with a bottle of beer in their hand and really fantastic arms. Like, really fucking fantastic arms. Like, Derek-level arms.

Stiles stops in front of the couch, fighting the urge to cling onto the little wooden wolf because he wants to hold on to something (wants to cling, to remind himself that he’s not going to float away in his panic), and says, “I’m, uh, looking for the alpha.”

The person laughs and Katie looks (weirdly) super uncomfortable and about fifteen emotions cross Jake’s face in the span of a few seconds before it finally settles on what looks a hell of a lot like resignation, and then he closes his eyes. And when he opens them, they’re red. Not so-wasted-you’re-about-to-fall-off-the-monkey-bars red, but…red. Crimson. Alpha.

It takes Stiles a second, because that was literally the last thing he was expecting (well, maybe not literally, because Jake could have burst into flames or Katie could have started tap dancing or someone could have offered him a blow job), and then the panic turns to anger and his temper _snaps_ , and he snarls (shouts?), “You fucking asshole. Elizabeth, really? What is that, your stripper name? Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

Jake starts laughing so hard he can’t answer for a solid fifteen seconds (of Stiles just standing there, shaking, hands clutching at the wolf so he doesn’t do something supremely stupid like punch his friend for being such a dick and for doing this to him and goddamn it), but finally he gasps out, “Elizabeth’s not my—she’s my sister. Jesus. And I didn’t want you to freak out.”

“Nice fucking job with that.”

Jake sobers a little, putting a hand on the arm of the person next to him, who looks like they’re about to hurt someone (Stiles), and then he stands, wiping tears from his eyes. “I’m sorry.” He pulls Stiles towards him (which, okay, ask next time, seriously), burying his face in Stiles’s neck, and Stiles lets him because it’s not worth not letting him, and besides, it feels good. And then he pulls back to look at Stiles. “Would you like to meet Elizabeth?”

Stiles takes a deep breath, because he really wants his next words to not be shouted (screamed), and then he manages a fairly calm, “Yeah, that’d probably be a good idea.”

Jake tilts his head to the side slightly, just past Stiles’s, and says in a voice only a little louder than normal, “Elizabeth?”

There’s a second of not-talking (except for the conversations around them, and Stiles knows people are watching but he’s _not going to look_ ), and then a woman asks, “Does Elizabeth sound like a stripper’s name?”

Holy shit, person behind him. Stiles turns, flailing a bit because _this is awkward_ , to see a woman who looks a little older than Jake standing there, an almost-smile on her face. “No?”

The smile grows. “I think I’m disappointed. You must be Stiles.”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, Stiles. That’s me. Stiles.” God, he’s babbling. “And you’re the alpha? The other alpha?”

Her eyes flare red, which answers that question, and then she offers her (non-taloned, thank god, he hated the alpha pack) hand, which he takes and shakes as nonchalantly as he can given that she could kill him really easily and nobody would bat an eye except maybe Jake and Katie. “I am. It’s nice to meet you; I’ve heard so much about you.”

“I—” Haven’t heard anything about her, except that she’s an alpha. “Wait, which of you was supposed to be the alpha? Like, it went to both of you, but it seems like it should have just gone to one of you, or—I don’t actually know how that works, does it just kind of split, or did you do this intentionally, or were you both heirs, I don’t get it, and I’m going to stop talking now.”

She looks past him, probably at Jake, then says, “Jake was the original heir, but it split when our father died, likely because he was so young at the time.”

“Cool. Well, not cool that your dad died, because that sucks, and I’m sorry, but it’s good that it worked out, and this is a really fun party, thanks for letting me come to it, I’m not going to stop asking uncomfortable questions now.”

She smiles for real this time. “That’s okay. I’ll leave you to Jake. Please, enjoy yourself.”

“Thanks. Thank you. And for letting me onto your territory, too. And not eating me.” And he really needs to shut up now.

Elizabeth looks past him again, and then she smirks, pivots, and walks away, disappearing into the massive crowd of werewolves. And Jake wraps his arm around Stiles’s shoulders from behind, yanking him down so he falls against the couch across Jake’s lap, and Katie’s, and hot-arm-person’s, and wow, that’s awkward, because now his feet are in some stranger’s lap, and that person definitely has a dick, or a very realistic approximation of one.

“Sorry, sorry.” Stiles tries to pull away, but the person just laughs and pats Stiles’s shins with his non-beer like it’s no big deal that Stiles is playing footsie with his dick. “Jake, seriously, let me up.”

Hot-arm-person snorts. “It really is okay, you know. We’re big on touch here.”

Stiles knows that, but, “There’s touch, and then there’s someone you don’t know getting really personal with…personal things.” He twists as best as he can in Jake’s remarkably strong grip to look at Jake, who looks really fucking proud of himself and also (unfairly) attractive in a way that Stiles probably shouldn’t be thinking about while sitting on his lap. “Jake. Come on. Stop being a dick.”

Jake stares at him for a second, then sighs and swings Stiles around (damn it, it’s so unfair that he can do that) so Stiles is squished between him and Katie. Hot-arm-person reaches over Katie to offer a hand. “I’m Seth, by the way, now that we’ve gotten all personal.”

Probably a guy, then. Stiles shakes his(?) hand, saying, “Stiles. I’m Sun’s roommate.”

“Believe me, the whole house knows that. Jake hasn’t shut up about you since he got back.”

Oh. That was awkward. “Probably just excited that he doesn’t need to keep acting human around me.”

Seth shoots him a disbelieving look because, okay, that explanation does sound pretty stupid. But it’s not like Stiles has a better one. “Right.”

And they’re not going to keep talking about that. “What are you, then? I mean, I know you’re a werewolf. I’m assuming you’re a werewolf. You might not be a werewolf. I dated a werecoyote at one point. Not the point. Are you a student or….you look too old to be a student, but you could be a grad student or getting your PhD, which I guess technically is a grad student—”

“I’m a Navy medic.”

Navy. Huh. That explained the arms. Though, “I would have expected werewolves to go for something more kickass, like the SEALs or something. Not that there’s anything wrong with medics. Medics are cool. And necessary. And useful. Just not very…werewolf-y.” Though Scott is a vet. But Scott is also basically a ball of fluff with a spine, so he doesn’t really count.

“It’s too risky for werewolves to be in major combat positions, because it’s really hard to explain why we just survived being shot a couple times, or why the IED blast didn’t do any permanent damage.”

“Ah.” That makes sense.

Seth shrugs. “And also, I just like being a medic.”

“That’s really cool, dude.” Because, like, werewolf Navy guy. Awesome. And werewolf Navy guy who saved dying people. More awesome. “Isn’t it really hard being away from your pack for that long, though? I mean, I know Scott gets kind of weird that so much of the pack is away, and Isaac—well, Isaac has his own issues, but I think being in France is hard.”

Katie snickers. “He just spends ninety percent of his time home wrapped around whatever he can find. Jake, Elizabeth, the mail box.” Seth shoves her, so hard that she jolts into Stiles and pushes him against Jake, and she laughs. “It’s true and you know it.”

Seth leans around her to look at Stiles again. “I’d think you’ve have a similar problem, being alone at college.”

Stiles shrugs. “I mean, I’m human, so it’s not…” My pack, but he doesn’t want to say that aloud.

But Seth nods like he gets it. “That makes sense. Anyway, I’m getting another beer. You want one?”

Does Stiles want a beer? Stiles isn’t old enough for a beer (technically, for all that he cares about technicalities), but, “Yeah, thanks.”

“Jake?”

Jake nods. “Sure. What the hell.”

A couple of girls walk over after that (except they’re women, really, probably five years older than Stiles), and beam down at him, which mostly just makes him want to stand so when he starts babbling and flailing he won’t hit Jake or Katie in the face.

The middle one smirks down at him. “You must be Jake’s new friend.”

How much did Jake talk about him? “Yeah. I’m Stiles.”

The one to the right (his right, not her right) rolled her eyes. “Really? What kind of name is Stiles?”

“One that’s better than my given name.”

The middle one laughs like that’s funny, which it wasn’t really meant to be, though, cool, a hot girl is laughing at something he said. “I like you. Good choice, Jake.”

Jake rolls his eyes. “I appreciate your approval, Lexi.”

His tone is mild, but she shrinks back a little bit, like she’s afraid, which is kind of ridiculous, because Jake is seriously one of the least scary werewolves he knows other than maybe Scott, who’s basically a hairy marshmallow (which is a disgusting thought, and one Stiles hopes he never has again). Even Sun and Katie are scarier, somehow, less controlled. Jake is like a model of control (except when he has Stiles pressed up against a wall, or even then), except it’s a calm control instead of that angry brittle control that Derek holds against himself like it’s some kind of shield.

So Stiles (pinnacle of self-control) shoves at Jake. “Stop intimidating your friends.”

The girl looks surprised now, and the left one looks amused. But Jake just shoves back. “I’m the alpha. I can do whatever I want.”

“You’re _an_ alpha, and no you can’t. I practically lived with an alpha. I know how it works.” Insofar as much as anyone in Scott’s pack new how it worked. They were basically all just flailing the dark and occasionally they hit things they shouldn’t and ended up getting bitten. Occasionally literally.

“He got you there.” Seth, who apparently was walking over while Jake was freaking out his betas, hands each of them an open beer bottle, then sits down, Katie curling up against him.

And this conversation has officially gotten a little too serious for Stiles at the moment, so he takes a long drink of beer (which is gross, but he can’t spit it out, and supposedly it grows on you) and pretends he’s not there (which he’s surprisingly good at).

But then left-girl holds out her hands to him. “I’m Laney, Jake’s cousin. On the psycho mom side, not the alpha dad side.”

Jake bares his teeth at her, but she doesn’t seem as cowed as Lexi did. But to Stiles, words like that are like a ball of string if he’s a cat. Which he’s not. But the idea still works. “What do you mean, psycho—”

“Okay, we’re changing the subject.” Katie grabs Stiles’s beer bottle, taking a long drink from it, and the tension drops from the room (or at least their little corner of it) as he flails out of surprise (because Jesus, she’s fast).

And with Jake’s arm around him from one direction and Katie’s legs dangling over his knees from the other, Stiles settles in for a good time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a pain to write, so sorry if it's kind of a mess or if it's kind of abrupt. The next chapter will be better, I promise.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a minor panic attack in this chapter, as well as what could maybe be categorized as PTSD. If anyone thinks I should add a PTSD tag, I would be happy to.

Sometime during the night Stiles finds himself on a couch with his head on someone’s lap. It is a very comfy couch, with a head scratcher running through his hair over and over. A warm head scratcher. With nails. It feels good.

Someone laughs nearby. “I think you broke the human.”

Stiles resents that remark. He hasn’t been broken in years. “The human is fine. More than fine. The human is so fine he hasn’t caused anyone’s death in _years_.” See? That’s proof he’s fine.

There’s a rumbling noise and the lap starts vibrating. (Are they moving? Why are they moving? He doesn’t want to be moving. Is he supposed to do something when he’s moving?)

Call someone. If something happens, he’s supposed to call someone. That will show he is super extra fine. Stiles pulls out his phone and finds the person he’s supposed to call maybe probably kind of. And then he presses the button to dial, and it’s amazing how phones can do that. Dial with one button.

There is ringing, ringing, ringing, and he almost forgets why it’s ringing, but then a voice says, “What?” and Stiles grins because he likes that voice.

“Hi.”

“It’s two in the morning. What do you want?”

Stiles can’t remember. But people are supposed to say hi, aren’t they? “Hi.”

“Hi, Stiles.”

He said hi back. And in that growly voice of his. “Hi. Why are you so grumpy?”

“You’re drunk.”

“I asked why you’re grumpy, not why I’m…” Crap. “Drunky.”

A sigh comes through the phone, and it sounds funny, so Stiles does it back. “Jesus, you’re wasted.”

Wasted? “Nothing was wasted. Not a drop.” Or maybe a few drops, because some definitely fell out of a glass or a bottle or a can or something at some point because there’s no way that didn’t happen.

“I can see that.”

“Then why did you say I wasted?”

The lap is shaking again. “I didn’t say you wasted, I said you _are_ —never mind. Let me talk to your handler.”

“You c’n—you can handle me.”

Another sigh. “No, I can’t.”

And then the phone is plucked from Stiles’s grip, which it takes him a second to realize, and then he looks behind him, or tries to, but his body doesn’t want to twist that way, and the head scratcher tightens its grip on his head, and he’s fairly sure head scratchers aren’t supposed to do that.

“He’s fine.” Jake’s voice. Is Jake nearby? Stiles likes Jake. The head scratcher pats his face. “I know you do. Look, we’re perfectly capable of taking care of Stiles, and he doesn’t need someone checking up after him. Go back to your own pack, Hale.” And then the phone is being slid back into Stiles’s pack, and the hand feels good. But they were mean to Derek, and that’s not okay. People shouldn’t be mean to Derek. Other than Stiles. Stiles can be mean to Derek because Derek knows he won’t burn his house down.

“Be nice to Derk. Derek. Nice to Derek.”

More patting of the head scratcher on his face. “Just sleep. You’re going to feel like hell in the morning.”

That is probably true, so Stiles sleeps.

\--

Stiles does feel like hell in the morning. He feels like someone drove a spike into his eye and then shot him in the head with an arrow and then threw up on him for good measure.

Once he manages to get himself upright, Elizabeth hands him a glass of water and a sealed bottle of Advil with an apologetic, “None of us get hangovers. Or headaches.” Because right. Werewolves.

He scratches at the plastic with his longest nail until it peels off in a long irritating (noisy, fuck) circle, then opens the bottle and manages to down two pills, even though the sweetness makes him feel like he wants to throw up. More like he wants to throw up. Ugh. “Did somebody chew on my head?”

She smiles at him. “Jake wouldn’t let anyone near you once you were drunk enough.”

“Did _Jake_ chew on my head?”

Her smile widens, and suddenly she looks very much like Jake (hot, brunette, lips that should not be that red naturally but Jake doesn’t wear lipstick. Stiles knows.) “No.”

“Where is he, anyway?”

A weight drops down on his head, which does not help anything, and he flails away from it, falling across the couch to see Katie leaning over the backrest, grinning at him. “Running. Sun and Laney and a couple others are with him.” She looks at Elizabeth. “Sorry. You need me for anything?”

Elizabeth shakes her head. “I’m good for now. You can take the human, but remember Jake wants him in one piece.”

Stiles scrambles up to his feet, which immediately leads to him wishing he wasn’t on his feet, because ow, and also nausea, and also his mouth tastes like a skunk just died in it which has nothing to do with him standing but is still really unfortunate. “The human can speak for himself.”

Elizabeth beams at him. “I know. But I speak for the pack congruently with Jake, and it’s my job to remind our betas of the rules set down by both of us.”

That was fair enough. “Makes sense. How does that work, anyway? Having both of you as alphas. I mean, I know—knew?—another pair of alphas, but they didn’t have their own pack, so they didn’t really have that kind of problem.”

Katie starts fiddling with the back out of couch, but Elizabeth just tilts her head to the side in that weird way that wolves have sometimes. “You knew Ethan and Aiden?”

(And that was a boatload of bad memories he didn’t want to think about.) “Yeah.”

She stares at him for another second, and then her eyes widen. “You’re from Beacon Hills. Jake mentioned that in passing, but I didn’t put that together. You’re _from_ Beacon Hills.”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” Another few seconds of looking at him, and then something resolves in her eyes and she nods. “It works for two reasons; the pack spends a lot of time separated, and Jake and I get along well. Our comparative ages mean that he left for college the fall after I graduated, so we can effectively hold two territories with one pack. And any arguments we have are worked out before we go to the pack to give orders.”

“That sounds…remarkably civil.” And also like they handled things way better than Scott. Or Derek. “I guess having a lot of tradition to work from helps.”

“It certainly does. Though from what I’ve heard, the Beacon Hills pack has dealt remarkably well despite the multiple losses and multiple alpha changes.”

If you ignore all the dead people. “Yeah. Uh, not my favorite topic of conversation, honestly, so…I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

She nods. “Of course. Katie, if you will, tell Jake I say yes.”

Eyebrows raised, Katie nods, and then Elizabeth inclines his head towards Stiles before walking away. As soon as she’s out of the room, Katie vaults over the back of the couch, wrapping her arms around Stiles’s midsection and getting just a tad bit too close to places where her hands probably should not be if he wants to keep his visit PG-13. “So. Want to try to entice Jake back to civilization?”

Stiles turns, pulling away to slump down on the couch next to her. “I’ve found it’s usually better not to get between a werewolf and their run unless the world is ending. Speaking of that, why are you here and not out there with them?”

“Jake asked me to keep an eye on you.”

“Seriously?” That’s as bad as Scott.

She shrugs, looking totally unrepentant. “You’re a human in the middle of a werewolf pack, and I know you’re used to werewolves, but the ones in your pack—with the exception of Hale—were bitten, not born. We react differently, and you’re not used to it. And honestly, most of the people here, they’re not used to you.”

“And he doesn’t trust me.”

Katie laughs. The sound is oddly unnerving, because even though she spends like half her life smiling, he’s only heard her laugh maybe a half-dozen times since he met her. Which is odd. “You wouldn’t be here if he didn’t trust you. No, it’s honestly a sincere concern for your safety. And—” She holds her hands out to him, and he lets her grab his. “—up.”

And with that, and seemingly (disconcertingly) little effort, she levers both of them up and onto the floor. “Where are we going?”

“Outside. I figure if you start screaming, Jake will come back so we can have some fun.”

“I’m not going to start screaming in a house full of werewolves.” And he wasn’t sure if his head could take it, even if the headache was starting to dull.

“Fine. We’re going outside anyway.”

They make it outside with only a short detour for Stiles to pee and rinse out his mouth so it tastes less like death (his toothbrush is in his car, which is just too far away), and it’s gorgeous out. Warm, sunny, and it opens out into a yard with expansive woods past it. It’s like a werewolf heaven.

“You sure Jake is going to just…show up?” The plan seems dubious at best, and while most of Stiles’s plans fall under that category, they’re _his_ plans.

But Katie grins at him. “Yep. And—oh, shit, I forgot coffee.”

“Coffee?” He sounds pitiful, he knows, but _coffee_.

She laughs again (wow, it’s like a record). “I can get you some, too. Just…stay.” And with that, she hurries back into the house, leaving Stiles standing near the edge of the absurdly huge lawn, looking out for glowing eyes between the trees.

Being here, being with this pack of werewolves for this giant party, is…surreal. Because they’re all so damn stable, even though they have two alphas under twenty-five (and seriously, how many teenage alphas are there?), and they haven’t spent the past few years basically under siege so they’re not all living with PTSD (which is seriously a good thing, because Derek is basically the prime example of what happens when you give PTSD with a werewolf), and it’s…relaxing.

Stiles is so busy thinking about the awesomeness of having non-traumatized werewolf friends that he misses the body rocketing out of the woods until it’s halfway across the law, face covered in too much hair, eyes a glowing gold. And then Stiles _reacts_. There’s a branch near him, and he snatches it up, wielding it like a bat, and swings, his force mixed with the werewolf’s momentum smashing the werewolf face-first into the branch, and the Stiles scrambles out of the way so he isn’t squished against the house by a bleeding werewolf (because been there, done that, has no interest in a round two).

The werewolf curls up with his face towards the wall, shifting back (judging by the way his ears no longer look furry-elven), and Stiles is torn between wanting to comfort him and wanting to run screaming, because, shit.

“Ow.” A low moan comes from the werewolf, and shit, Stiles knows that voice.

“Sun?” He crouches down next to Sun, who has blood spattered across his tan face, and the branch falls from his nerveless fingers because fuck, fuck, fuck, he just hurt his friend, and why the fuck does he keep doing this? “Sorry. Shit, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Ow.” Sun rolls up to stare at the sky, Stiles’s hands fluttering uselessly around him because Scott is the health person, not Stiles, and Stiles doesn’t have anything useful on him anyway. “Jesus, you hit hard.”

“Sorry.”

Sun’s head shakes back and forth. “No, I’m impressed.” There’s a low growl, and Sun lolls his head to the side. “My fault, Jake. Sorry.”

The hell? “Seriously?” Stiles turns so he can see Jake, who is…a wolf. Like a full wolf. Like a Derek wolf. “I hit him in the face with a stick. I think that counts as my fault.”

“I rushed him. Look, Jake, I’m really—”

“Shut up.”

Stiles snaps his head back to look at Jake again, because what the hell? But there is Jake, fully human and totally naked, eyes glowing crimson (and that should not be as arousing as it is, but never let it be said that Stiles’s body has any common sense when it comes to his libido). “What—”

Jake clamps a hand over Stiles’s mouth, shutting him up rather effectively (mostly because Stiles isn’t planning on biting or licking Jake’s hand, which is usually how he deals with this kind of situation) and leans (still totally naked, holy shit) over Sun to press his mouth (teeth, wow, that’s a lot of teeth) over Sun’s carotid. And then he says, very clearly, “Shut up.”

Well then.

A few seconds later, Jake pulls away from both of them, and Sun starts wiping (smearing) the blood from his face.

“Okay.” Jake exhales. “Stiles, are you okay?”

“Am I okay? I’m not the one who just got hit in the face with a branch—and sorry again for that, by the way.”

Sun nods, but it’s Jake who says, “But you are the one who is shaking like a leaf and smells like—” He stops. Swallows. “Prey.”

Well, shit. “Sorry.”

Jake throws his hands up. “Will you stop fucking apologizing already? Sun is fine. His nose is already healed.”

Thank God for werewolf healing. “Well when I bludgeon my friends I tend to like to apologize. Especially when my friends can rip my throat out with their teeth.”

“We’re not going to rip your throat out.”

“Well yeah, but you _could_.”

Jake looks like he’s done with everything that’s going on (a sentiment Stiles can 100% empathize with), and then Katie’s voice chirps, “What the hell did I miss?”

Stiles flops back on the grass (and, ow, a stick) and throws his arm over his eyes because he’s really just hoping at this point that he gets swallowed up by the grass. Or, like, a dragon or something cool. “I assaulted my roommate, he apologized for it, and Jake has no pants.”

There’s a second of silence, and then Katie says, “I’ll go get some clothes. Coffee?”

Stiles moans because that sounds heavenly. “Please. Yes. God.”

“I gave it to Jake to pass it along.”

“But he’s going to drink it all. And he’s _naked_.”

Jake laughs. “I’m not going to drink it all.”

“But you’re still naked.”

A finger pokes his forearm. “Do you want the coffee or not?”

Stiles bolts upright because, yes. “Give me. Now.”

Jake grins, takes a very deliberate sip (asshole) then hands the mug over to Stiles, who cradles it in his hands because it is warm and he is cold (so cold, and shaking, and he can’t believe he hit Sun like that by accident. Intention is okay, but that is not).

Which means he should probably at least offer some of his coffee. “You want some?”

Sun looks at him, then at Jake, then back at him, and then he shakes his head. “It’s all yours. I’m going to go get cleaned up.”

And then it’s just Stiles and Jake, who’s still freaking naked, and it’s really distracting because Jake is really hot and he kissed Stiles before (and who does that?), and now all Stiles can think about is Jake’s lips against his and what it would feel like to have the rest of his very built body pressed up against him, and that is not a good thing to be thinking about right now, so Stiles just drinks his coffee.

\--

Stiles gets a call from Scott at nine that night, and he heads outside to take it because the thing about being in a house full of werewolves (with a shit-ton of guest bedrooms, holy crap) is that they can hear fucking everything. All the time. How does anyone ever have sex?

“You okay?” is the first thing Scott asks, and honestly, that’s kind of insulting. Stiles can totally take care of himself. Most of the time.

“Yeah.” And maybe he sounds a little snarly, but whatever. “Why?”

“You called Derek at two in the morning last night. This morning. Whatever.”

“That’s a lie.” Stiles would remember that. Probably. Though given how drunk he must have been to have ended up as hungover as he did, maybe not. Not that he was going to admit that.

Scott laughs. “He said you were wasted.”

“I was…mildly intoxicated.” There’s a pause and, yeah, Stiles hadn’t really expected him to believe that. “Okay. Yes. I was kind of wasted. But the thing about werewolves is that you don’t have any idea how much humans can drink. Especially born werewolves.”

Another pause and then, “You know how much you can drink.”

“Totally not the point.”

There’s a hand on the small of his back, suddenly, and Stiles whips around to see Jake standing there, hands up like he’s trying to show that he’s unarmed. Not that that means a damn thing, because he is a weapon. But whatever. And then Jake’s face falls. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were—I wasn’t listening. I didn’t know you were on the phone.”

Oh. “It’s okay. Scott, um…”

“I’ll Skype with you when you get back to school.”

“Yeah.” Stiles hangs up, sticking his phone in his pocket, then turns his attention back to Jake, who’s standing there with his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched a little bit. “So. What exciting plans do we have for tonight?”

Jake makes a face. “I—can we talk for a sec?”

Crap. “Is this talk going to end with me slammed against any walls, or trees, or any other vertical or vertical-passing objects?”

“That’s—what?” Jake blinks at him. “What?”

Right. That makes no sense without context. Whoops. “Never mind. Shoot.”

“You want to talk about what happened earlier?”

It takes a second for the words to process, and then bile rises in Stiles’s throat, and he can deal with it (he’s really fucking good at dealing with it), but then he’s gagging on it, and he can’t breathe, and he turns away, hand over his mouth, so he doesn’t throw up everything that he’s eaten in the past day, because fuck. _Fuck_. He had almost forgotten (not that he forgets, but sometimes he can stop thinking about the bad things because he can’t spend all his time thinking about the bad things or he’ll drown), but now there’s acid in his lungs and burning in his throat and fuck he had hurt Sun fuck fuck fuckfuckfuckfuck—

“Breathe.” A hand settles between his shoulder blades, moving just a little, and there’s a whimpering noise that must be coming from his throat because he can feel the vibration through the burning. “Hey. It’s okay. I’m not mad at you. Nobody’s mad at you. He gets hurt worse than that in practice—we all do. It’s okay.”

Stiles sucks in a deep breath. “Why—” But that’s the only word he can get out, and then he’s back to just trying to breathe, warmth sinking into him from the hand on his back.

“I wanted to know why you hit him, and why it made you smell like pain and prey. Because that’s not normal.”

“Thanks,” he manages to gasp out, and Jake laughs a little, shortly.

“Always. You want to sit, so we can have this conversation civilly instead of standing here like morons?”

Sitting might be beyond his capability—if he tries to do it, his knees are probably going to lock and he’s probably going to just fall over—but he nods, and somehow Jake manages to lower him down to the ground, never taking that hand off of his back.

And then they just sit there for a minute (five? Ten? Stiles doesn’t know), Stiles breathing and trying not to throw up. And finally, _finally_ , he thinks he can talk. Not that he wants to, but Jake deserves an answer, and chances are this isn’t going to be the last time he freaks out (and it’s a miracle he hasn’t done it in front of them before).

“I have…. things tend not to go well when people rush me. Supernatural people. Beacon Hills was really bad for a while, and I was in the middle of it, and things got…bad. For a while. Yeah. So I—I have things that I do that are, you know, defense mechanisms. For when things come running at me with glowing eyes and fangs and the ability to kill me. Because usually that means that they’re going to try to kill me. Or at least maim me. And kidnap me. And it’s—maybe in five years I’ll have grown out of it, but it hasn’t been long enough, and I know I’m not going to die, I know he’s not going to try to kill me, you’re not going to try to kill me, but my brain goes ‘not Scott’ and ‘not Scott’s pack’ and just sort of turns into ‘find a weapon, find an escape, don’t die.’” And there. That doesn’t sound too bad. “So…yeah.”

Jake is silent for a really long time, so long that Stiles thinks maybe it did sound bad, and then, in a voice that sounds really really wrong but Stiles doesn’t have the brainpower to figure out why at the moment, he asks, “And the pain?”

(Darkness and hurting people _prey they were all prey it was all a game he could play this game forever but he wanted to keep moving keep stepping he wanted to kill_ ) and Stiles can’t answer. He opens his mouth and thinks the words and they just won’t come out, and Jake seems to get that, because he just goes back to rubbing little circles on Stiles’s back, and they sit there as the world around them goes quiet and loud at the same time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was only so fast because I had about half of it written before I wrote the previous chapter. The next chapter hasn't been started yet, so I'm not sure when I'll post it. Hopefully within the week. There are probably 3 more chapters left in part one (depending on how I end up splitting up what happens, but it should be 3), and then I'll be moving onto part two (which I'm excited about).
> 
> You may have noticed that he's a lot more traumatized by what happened with the Nogitsune in my version than is shown in canon. That's because I think they all should have been a lot more screwed up by what happened so...I'm making that happen.
> 
> Also, the response I've gotten is amazing and I'm honestly kind of awe-struck. Thank you all so much for your kudos and your comments. It really makes my day when I see that I've gotten kudos and comments, so thank you.


	11. Chapter 11

“So who can tell me why it’s hard to study terrorism?”

Stiles perks up because, ooh, that’s interesting, and better than talking about the syllabus, which they’ve been doing for the past _forty-five minutes_. Forty-five. With a four. And a five. (And another thirty-six.)

The guy the row ahead of him sticks his hand up like his life depends on it, then calls out without waiting for the teacher, “Because there isn’t one definition of it.”

The teacher nods. “Thank you, Mr. Edwards. Almost every different organization has a different definition, which is, incidentally, the topic of the next class and the reading you have to do for it. Anyone else?”

There’s a second’s pause, with Stiles trying to think of something because the first thing was the answer he had (because that’s basically the standard issue with it, according to the internet), and then a girl says, “Because it’s really spread out.”

Another nod. “That does make it difficult. We try to generalize terrorism into one thing, but terrorism in India isn’t the same as terrorism in Iraq, which isn’t the same as terrorism in Colombia.”

Something strikes Stiles (because he’s good at thinking of random things on command, or not on command, or just always), and he holds up his hand. Something almost like a smile crosses the teacher’s face (Mr. Gold, his name is Mr. Gold, Stiles is going to remember that), and he gestures towards Stiles, who says, “The places with the most terrorism have really bad reporting.”

“Thank you for waiting to be called on. Yes, one of the biggest issues when it comes to studying terrorism, especially on an event-level—as opposed to on a country-level, where we just have aggregated data—is that the reporting is weak and inconsistent. Fortunately, that’s the problem of unpaid college students in Maryland, not academics.” There’s one of those long awkward pauses that happens when the teacher makes a joke that nobody gets and so nobody laughs and it’s weird, and then Mr. Gold shakes his head. “Okay. Those answers were good, and we’re going to continue talking about this next class, but for right now, I’m going to let you go early because I need coffee.”

The class clears out like the room’s on fire (without the screaming), and Stiles sticks all his stuff in his bag and follows behind. Walking out of the classroom with his head down, looking up on his phone to try to figure out what was in Maryland (because that was a very specific joke, Maryland), Stiles starts down the hallway. At which point he promptly runs bodily into—

Sun, who wraps an arm around Stiles’s shoulders before he finishes processing the fact that he’s no longer walking anywhere (he’s tired, okay). Sun, who has no business being in the poli-sci/international relations building. “What, are you follow me?”

Sun snorts. “Don’t flatter yourself. My orgo class is right there.”

“Seriously?” Stiles is the master of absurd lies; he can tell when someone is bullshitting him.

A nod, and then Sun pull up his schedule on his phone, and sure enough, that’s where the class is. Weird. “See?”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. But doesn’t that start in like half an hour?”

Sun gives a one-shouldered shrug. “I wanted to be early. I like being early to the first class; it gives the illusion I’m a good student.”

That’s actually not a bad idea. “Smart.”

“Thanks.” Sun starts to say something else, stops, and then says, “So Jake was thinking we should grab take-out tonight, commiserate the start of a new semester.”

“My last class ends at seven-thirty.”

Sun nods. “Cool. We’ll see you after that.”

That wasn’t actually Stiles’s point, but okay. He can do that.

\--

Stiles cannot do that. Stiles needs coffee and sleep and to transfer out of his experimental art general education requirement class. Because apparently “experimental art” is drawing naked people. But not like young hot model naked people. No, these are old wrinkly sagging naked people.

So he isn’t actually expecting (prepared for) Jake to throw open the door, plant a kiss on his forehead like he’s five, and drag him into the room. He’s so not expecting it that he stops walking, which leads to him tripping over his own feet and pitching forward into Jake’s arms, which is not really what he was planning on doing with his day.

Katie snickers from Sun’s bed as Stiles rights himself, and he glares at her, which just makes her grin at him. “You look like a porcupine.”

The fuck? “A porcupine? Seriously?” And then the smell of fried food hits him, and he perks up. “Is that dinner?”

Jake laughs. “Yeah. I got you curly fries and everything.”

Holy shit. Curly fries. That almost makes up for the hour of naked old dude he just suffered through (and he’s dropping that class as soon as he turns his computer on), and Stiles drops his bag next to his bed and turns back to his friends. “Me. Curly fries. Give. Now.”

Jake pats the floor between the two beds next to where he’s sitting, and Stiles sits down there, Katie and Sun dropping down across from them and starting to unpack what looks like burgers and fries from a couple of bags. While they’re working, Jake turns to Stiles. “So, I have a question.”

If it doesn’t involve fries or coffee, Stiles isn’t sure he has the brainpower to deal with it, but he nods anyway. “Yeah?”

“Are you part of a pack?”

Where the fuck did that come from? “What do you mean?”

“You talk about the McCall pack, but are you a member of it?” Sun shoots him a weird look at that, but he doesn’t say anything, just keeps on unpacking food (and, ooh, curly fries).

But he’s human, so this conversation is just…weird. “Not really, I guess.”

There’s something unreadable on Jake’s face, which is super fucking frustrating, because Stiles is tired and hungry and wants to know what the hell is going on. “So you’re packless?”

“I…guess, yeah.” As much as a human can be packless. That’s like saying that a hippo isn’t part of a murder. Like, it’s not a crow, so duh, but it’s not something that anyone would specify.

A smile twitches up on Jake’s face and then disappears. “Want to join ours?”

Oh, fuck. That’s where this is going? “I don’t want to be a werewolf.” No matter what Peter Hale the murderous nutjob thought.

But Jake is shaking his head before he finishes with the word ‘werewolf’. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. We have humans in our pack—or can, but they decided, and this is totally their choice, not ours, to be turned, and you wouldn’t have to—and so you can join. If you’d like.”

That sounds cool, if it a bit convoluted. But what the hell. If Jake wants the hippo to be with the crows, why not. What could be the harm? “Yeah, sure.”

Jake beams at him, sliding the curly fries across the floor towards him. “Welcome to the pack. Have a curly fry.”

And Stiles, in fact, has several.

\--

Things change after that, and don’t.

They all still treat him the same, even though every once in a while Sun will shoot him really weird looks when he talks about the awesomeness that is Lydia Martin (because he might not still be in love with her, but he’s still kind of in love with her. A little. Shh. Who wouldn’t be?), but that’s probably mostly because Stiles is ranting about someone whom Sun has never actually met. Which, to be fair, is probably a little weird.

Katie is still totally the same with him, which is mostly just her smiling when he fucks up and spending half her time watching volleyball games, and they’re both in the same gen ed literature class (The Social Constructs of Harry Potter, how fucking awesome is that) so they spend whatever time they’re together rereading Harry Potter and talking about how bad at economics J. K. Rowling was.

And Jake is just…there. In the room, or at Starbucks with him (because Stiles needs his coffee, and there’s a Starbucks on campus, and the other coffee shop on campus has coffee that tastes like someone set it on fire with gasoline but forgot to actually burn off the gasoline), or in the cafeteria, reading his textbooks (anatomy, chemistry, neurobiology—and doesn’t that sound like a bucket of joy) and eating food and just kind of being there. Which is unnervingly like Scott, except Scott isn’t that attractive, and Jake isn’t that unrelentingly optimistic.

Scott is, however, calling.

“Hey, dude. What’s up?”

“I had to learn about lizards today.” There’s a noise like Scott just hit his head against something. “Why the hell would I have to learn about lizards? Who has lizards?”

It wasn’t an attack. There had been this bizarre adrenaline surge at the sound of Scott’s voice, at the non-happiness in it, because that usually meant someone was dying or dead or about to be killed, and Stiles _knew_ that wasn’t the only time he heard it, but it felt like it. “Sucks for you. And I had a lizard.”

“You stole a lizard from Mr. Johnson’s classroom in third grade and then walked around with it on your head until your Dad got home and made you take it off. That doesn’t count as having a lizard. That counts as…”

“Appropriating one?”

Scott snorts. “Yeah, sure. But seriously, it’s ridiculous. Anyway, how are you doing? You have any hot dates?”

Yeah, right. “You mean other than the drunk guy who gave me a blow job at a party like four months ago? No.”

“There must be something.”

Stiles stretches out on his bed, arm behind his head, and stares up at the ceiling. There’s a water stain on the second tile from the corner. It looks like a duck. “Nah. I mean, Jake kissed me, but we’re doing that thing where we all pretend nothing happened, so…there’s that.”

“Jake? Your alpha friend? When was this?”

“Yeah. Uh, before Christmas. A little bit before Christmas. Like a week. But nothing’s happened since then, like I said.”

Scott is quiet for a moment, long enough that Stiles would have thought he was gone if he couldn’t hear him breathing. “Do you want anything else to happen?”

And that question right there was the problem with this line of discussion. “I don’t know. I mean, he’s—he’s hot, don’t get me wrong, and he kisses like he knows what he’s doing, and obviously, I think, he’s into guys, or at least he’s just really damn good at faking it.”

“But?”

“But he treats me like I’m…precious.” There’s another long pause, with weird noises that Stiles finally realizes are Scott’s laughter, muffled probably by his hand. “Shut up. You know what I mean.”

Sounding strangled and too damn entertained, Scott says, “No, I really don’t.”

Jesus, does he really have to do this? “I mean, there’s always kind of this vibe of, like, ‘gotta look after the poor defenseless human.’ And the thing is that bad shit happens around me. All the time. And I don’t need to be with someone who thinks that.”

“I don’t think that.”

“Aw, Scotty, you offering to date me?”

It sounds like Scott is choking, which honestly was the whole point of the conversation. Scott is absurdly easy to rile up when you know what buttons to push, and Stiles does. “I’m just saying,” Scott puts in, “that there are people who don’t think that. Or you could find someone who’s, you know.”

“What?”

Scott hesitates, then says, “Human,” like a seventy-five-year-old grandma saying the word ‘black.’  Which, like, seriously? Scott was human until a few years ago, and given everything that happened, Stiles is only like 95% human. Which is not the point.

And also, “Yeah, dating someone human is going to work really well until I get attacked by a fucking harpy or something and end up needing to explain to my date why I’m not scared of the giant lady with wings or whatever the hell harpies actually look like in real life.”

“So what are you going to do?”

Stiles would throw up his hands, except he’s lying down, so he just sort of aggrivatedly gestures with his toes. “I don’t know. Probably remain lamentably single for the rest of the life. But enough about my lack of a love life. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Kira’s coming over in a couple of weeks.”

Apparently ‘let’s not talk about Stiles’s non-existent love life’ means ‘let’s talk about Scott’s love life instead.’ Fantastic. “That’s great.”

“Yeah, her school has a couple days of break, so she’s heading over to spend it here.” And then Scott launches into his classic rendition of how much he loves and adores and cannot live without Kira, and it’s all sappy and disgusting and adorable.

\--

He has a Skype session with Elizabeth three days later (and isn’t that weird as hell). She looks professional when she shows up on the screen, blazer over some sort of top, her hair pulled into a bun, discreet makeup on. And then she _beams_ at him.

“First, let me formally extend my welcome to our pack to you as Alpha Prime and Territory-Holder.”

There are way too many parts of that sentence that Stiles doesn’t understand. “Alpha Prime?”

Jake laughs from his position behind Stiles’s chair, and Stiles jerks because he had forgotten how damn close he is. “It’s a joke. You know the notation in math, where you put an apostrophe after something and pronounce it as ‘prime’? That’s us. We’re Alpha and Alpha Prime.”

“Ah.” Werewolf nerds. What the fuck is his life? “Well, thanks. For the welcome, I mean.”

She nods. “So I just wanted to cover a couple of things, responsibility-wise, because I’m assuming Jake didn’t bother.”

Responsibilities? “Yeah, no, he didn’t.”

“As a member of the pack, you’re always welcome in our home and to our counsel, so basically, if something’s going wrong, you can always ask us for advice. As a human, you’re not required to come to any of the meetings, though you’re welcome to if you’d like. If a member of the pack asks for your help you are expected to help if able and come to us if not and if the person hasn’t asked for your confidence. We don’t expect you to tell on each other unless someone’s seriously in danger. Beyond that, you’re not permitted to divulge information about the pack without our permission. Any questions?”

Wow, this is all official and stuff. “One thing—for the last part, I’ve talked to my friends back home about you guys, and I’m not going to just stop talking to them. And my dad, too, and Scott’s mom, and Dr. Deaton—they all know.”

Elizabeth’s gaze went past him, probably to Jake, and then she nodded. “That’s reasonable. If there are ever things we expect you to keep from them, we will explain it to you beforehand. The rule is mostly that you’re not supposed to run around telling random humans or hunters about us.”

“Unless we go power-hungry,” Jake chimed in, “and start killing people,” and there is definitely a story behind that, because Elizabeth looks (like Chris Argent when he was figuring out that Kate and Gerard were both murderous psychopaths and he was the only sane one in the family) devastated, but then she nods.

“Right. But that’s not going to happen, so it’s not a concern. Any other issues?” Stiles can’t think of any, so he shakes his head. “Okay. Jake, out.”

In the little video part that shows Stiles’s side, Jake’s eyes flare red, and then Elizabeth’s do too, and wow, this just turned into a very weird pissing match. “No.”

“Pick your battles, Jake. You know why this is important.” Jake’s eyes stay red for a few seconds longer, and then he nods, drags a warm finger across the back of Stiles’s neck, and walks out of the room. Elizabeth wait’s until the door is closed before talking again. “So now we have the chat where I make sure Jake is treating you right.”

The words take a second to register, and then Stiles is laughing and choking and it’s all very messy. “What?”

“Jake is an alpha, which means that sometimes he can be overbearing and pushy. And it can be hard to say no to him when he wants something. And this isn’t anything against you, Stiles; it’s just how it works. So I need to make sure that he’s not pushing you around or making you do things you’re not comfortable with.”

Stiles’s cheeks burn. “Oh my God. Is this the safe sex talk?” He had that talk with his father and has no intention of ever doing it again, especially not with the sister of a guy he wasn’t even sleeping with.

But she just shrugs. “If it needs to be.”

“No. Definitely no. Jake and I aren’t—there is no Jake and I. I mean, there is, because we’re both, you know, people—well, he’s a werewolf, but he’s still a person—and we’re friends, so there’s Jake and there’s me but there’s not Jake-and-me or Jake-and-I or however that works grammatically.” She blinks at him. “We’re not having sex. I’m not having sex. With your brother. Or anyone else. I don’t know if he’s having sex. Can we stop talking about this now?”

“Please.”

Great. “Look, my best friend is a True Alpha, and before that was Derek, and Peter, and the whole goddamn alpha pack, and Satomi, not really in that order, but my point is that I know alphas. I know how to deal with them. Believe me, I’m in no danger of Jake making me do anything. Seriously. At all.”

Elizabeth stares at him for a long moment, nostrils flaring like she’s trying to smell whether he’s telling the truth through the computer screen, and then she nods. “Okay. I’ll check in in a month or so, make sure that’s still the case. We take care of our pack, Stiles, and that includes, if need be, from each other.”

Oh, this has just gotten weird. “I’m fine. I promise. We’re fine. Everything’s fine. Well, not Yemen. Or Iraq. But everything else is fine. Yemen is a mess. It has like a civil war and terrorism and al-Qa’ida and ISIS or ISIL or IS or whatever you want to call it, and it’s—”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Right. Yes. He should stop talking about Yemen. “Thank you again for the…talk.”

Elizabeth is still laughing as she cuts off the call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two more chapters left in Part One, and then shit starts to really go down. I'm excited.
> 
> Also, I couldn't resist the little terrorism studies references, and a virtual cookie to anyone who can identify what the professor is referencing. (I'm not expecting anyone to; it's not someone that people really know about.) Also, Yemen really is a disaster.
> 
> Again, thank you to everyone who kudoses (or whatever that verb is) and comments. It really makes my day to see that.


	12. Chapter 12

The impact hits him like a fucking sledgehammer to the face (and the rest of his body, holy shit, ow) as his car skids, twists, plows into the thing that’s tall and dark and not moving in front of him, and then the passenger’s side of the car isn’t there anymore and there’s a tree there instead and there’s something white and ow in his face, and he shoves himself out of the car and pulls his phone out because he’s not going to die on the side of the road and there’s nobody around  and Jesus fuck everything hurts.

Scott’s in his contacts somewhere, and he scrolls through them with the hand that’s working, trying to focus his eyes enough to see the words moving by. Thoughts aren’t working right in his head, and everything’s weird and dragging and smearing, and he can’t remember what he saved Scott as but it’s probably Wolfy so he picks that one and sends _Been in a car accident_ because that’s what you do when you’re in an accident, and then he dials 911 and tries to explain that he’s been in an accident, but he can’t hear what he’s saying so he’s not sure if it comes out quite right.

And then everything turns off.

Everything turns back on slowly, like one of those slider light switches, fading everything from black to gray to glaring _glaring_ white and there’s beeping and it sucks and he really wants it to turn off, and he wants to say that, but then the slider goes back down and everything turns off again.

The next time everything turns on, it’s faster, and this time he manages to open his mouth and say something, except nothing comes out except breathing and rasping and it hurts, and then there’s water against his lips, dribbling down his chin, but some of it gets in his mouth, and it feels fucking fantastic, and he might moan a bit because it sounds kind of like someone is laughing, and it sounds weird with the beeping, and he really wants that beeping to shut off.

And he can say it now, maybe, because his mouth is working now. “Noise is really annoying.”

A hand touches his cheek, and there’s something that sounds like a growl, and they’re coming from two different directions and it’s really confusing and he doesn’t know what’s going on and he’s really tired and suddenly everything hurts and he really wants to pass out, so he does.

The time after that he figures out how to turn his head, and there’s someone with their eyes closed next to him, and there’s someone with their eyes closed next to him, and he doesn’t think they’re both the same person but he’s not sure if he turned his head in the same direction both times, and turning his head is the only thing that doesn’t hurt like fucking hell, so that’s all he does.

Except then that starts hurting, and he must make a noise, because then the eyes of the people (person?) are open and they’re (he’s?) leaning towards him, and then there’s growling, and he tries to lick his lips but his mouth feels like it’s made of cotton (full of cotton?) and then there’s water at his mouth and more growling.

“…happened?”

The growling cuts off sharply. “You were in a car accident.” Jake. That is Jake. Jake is here. In a hospital (is this a hospital? You go to hospitals when you’re in car accidents), and he shouldn’t be in hospitals because he is a werewolf and hospitals smell like blood, and that is bad. “We have contacts here that let me know as soon as you were brought in.”

“Why were you growling?”

Jake pokes him in the face. “I wasn’t. I have more control than that.”

But that doesn’t make sense. “There was growling.”

“That was your broody friend over there.”

Stiles turns his head, and there is a second person next to him. But it’s not the right person. “Derek?” Derek’s eyes fixes on his face, and there’s something really wrong with his expression but he can’t tell what it is because his brain isn’t working right _still isn’t working right_. “Why are you here?”

“Scott can’t leave Beacon Hills because there unicorn is back—”

“Alicorn.”

“—and even if he could…you texted me.”

“I texted Scott.” Hadn’t he texted Scott? He thought he had texted Scott.

Derek pulls the phone from his pocket and reads from it, “‘Bean care accident’. I’m still not sure how you got accident right but nothing else.”

“Autocorrect. Wonderful invention.”

Jake makes a noise, and Stiles jerks his head back towards him because he had honestly forgotten he was there. “I still don’t think he should be here, and now that you’re awake, you can tell him to leave.”

Derek makes that growling noise again. “I got permission from your co-alpha to be in your territory, and I am not interfering with your pack.”

Jake’s hand is back on Stiles’s face. “He is my pack.”

The growling noise get louder, and it feels like it’s vibrating through Stiles’s bones, and it almost hurts along with all of the other hurts. Everything hurts. “No, he’s not.”

The hand is in his hair, now, and the growling is even louder, and everything’s starting to be a bit smeary again. “He said he was packless and then let me feed him.”

Derek makes a noise like he’s been impaled, and Stiles jerks at that and tries to sit up because _Derek’s been impaled and he needs to save him_ , but two pairs of hands hold him down, and he struggles but they’re too strong, they’re so strong, and then there’s shouting and everything hurts _hurts_ and there are people and then everything smears to the side and is gone.

The next time he wakes up, Jake and Derek are gone and doctors are there and they ask him a lot of really stupid questions.

“What’s your name?” (Stiles Stilinski. No, I’m not telling you my real first name, because unless one of you is Polish, you won’t know if I’m telling you the truth anyway, so it’s Stiles.)

“What day is it?” (Sunday, which is wrong, but that’s only because nobody told him how long he was out for.)

“Who’s the president of the United States?” (Barak Obama, and if that was wrong he would have other problems, but that’s right. So there.)

“Can you count backwards from ten?” (Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. You want me to do it in Spanish? I can do it in Spanish. [They don’t need him to do it in Spanish.])

“How much pain are you in?” (More than when Gerard beat him. Less than when Allison died. But he doesn’t say that. He just shrugs, which hurts, because everything hurts, because he was in a car crash, and shit, his car is probably totaled, and he has to call his dad, and he kind of wants to see Derek and have Derek growl at him for a while because at least then it’ll be normal. He wants normal. Everything hurts.)

“You’re very lucky, given how you hit the tree. You have a minor concussion, one cracked rib, six bruised ribs, bruising across much of chest and upper arms, two broken fingers, and lacerations to your face, neck, and hands.” (Thanks.)

And then the doctors leave and a psychiatrist comes in and asks him (in way too many words) if he was trying to kill himself.

At that point, Stiles’s pain medication is wearing off and he’s tired and grumpy and _did not try to commit suicide, thank you very much_ , so he just grabs one of the pillows from behind his head, shoves it over his face (which is a very bad idea and hurts like hell and holy shit), and waits a second before pulling it down and saying, “I didn’t try to kill myself. I wasn’t thinking about killing myself. I don’t have suicidal ideations. I have a shitty car. Now it’s probably I _had_ a shitty car. But believe me, I don’t want to be dead.” And if he did, he had so many other choices beyond getting in a car crash in the middle of nowhere. The past few years had shown him that.

The psychiatrist pats his hand like that’s a totally normal thing to do to an eighteen-year-old and clearly doesn’t believe him, but whatever, as long as they don’t lock him up in an asylum again. And then he blinks and the light is different and Jake is sitting next to him, flipping through a book on…neuropsychology. Exciting.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?”

Jake snorts, closing the book. “My last class of the day ended an hour ago. Sun was here earlier, during his break, and Katie will be here later. They said they should let you out tomorrow.”

That’s fantastic, actually. Because Stiles really wants to be out of this hospital, with its people and its smells and its _being a goddamn hospital._

“I need to call my dad.” Now that he’s coherent enough to hold an actual conversation.

“Yeah, of course.” Jake pulls out Stiles’s phone and hands it over, and Stiles is going to take it in his left hand, except apparently that’s the hand with two broken fingers (and how the hell did he not notice that before) so he reaches out to take it with his right. Which sends bolts of pain through his arm and chest and basically everything else, so that’s fun. “You want me to leave?”

“Nah.” It’s not like Jake wouldn’t be able to listen in, anyway. He dials his dad’s number, then puts the phone to his ear, leans back against the pillows he’s sitting against (which really fucking hurts his ribs, but he’s sick of just lying there), and waits.

Three rings in, there’s a click, and then his father’s harried, “Stilinski.”

“Dad.”

A noise like his father is sitting down. “Oh, thank God.”

Stiles smiles, because the relief in his father’s voice was…was everything, somehow. Because he always knew that his father loved him over everyone else, always knew that his father would do anything for him, but sometimes it just helped to hear it. “Sorry for not calling earlier.”

“It’s okay.” His dad takes in a deep breath, then lets it out slowly, the air rushing against the microphone of his phone. “How are you feeling? Derek said you looked pretty beat up.”

“You talked to Derek?” What was Derek doing, talking to his dad?

“Yeah, he called me when he was heading down there, said he was going because Scott couldn’t. Answer the question.”

Yes. Right. The question. “I’m okay.”

“Stiles.”

“My ribs hurt, and my face, but I’m fine.” Mostly. Kind of. “Derek said the alicorn’s back.”

His dad sighs. “Yeah, they got rid of that maybe two hours after Derek left to head over to where you are.”

“Please tell me they didn’t kill it.” Because bad things happened when you killed unicorns. He had read enough Harry Potter to know that.

“They didn’t kill it. They gave it back to its herd, or…I stopped listening around the point where they started talking about unicorn herds.”

“Alicorn,” he corrected absently. “So things are all good there? Nothing coming to kill everyone?” There’s a pause, long enough for Stiles to know the answer is no. “What’s going on?”

“It’s, uh. It’s nothing.”

“Dad.”

“Scott’s been saying there might be something around the edges of the territory, but he doesn’t know what it is, and you _don’t need to worry about it_. It’s probably just an omega, which are words I never thought I would say. Whatever it ends up being, if it ends up being anything, Scott can take care of it. You just focus on getting better.”

Right. Scott probably could take care of it, whatever it was, and wasn’t that a weirdly disappointing thought. Because dealing with this stuff was what Stiles and Scott did. Together. And now Scott is doing it all on his own. He doesn’t need Stiles anymore. Maybe next Jake will start having some supernatural issue, and he can help them, instead. Be useful there.

“You still there?”

Stiles jerks, which, _ow_. “Sorry. Yeah. I’ll, uh. Let you get back to work now.”

“Stiles.”

“Be careful.”

“ _Stiles_.”

“Yeah?”

His dad sounds tired. “Get better, Stiles. Please. And don’t go finding something else to run after just because you can’t be here.”

His dad knew him too well. “I won’t.”

“Good. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Bye.”

Jake looks up from his textbook when Stiles lowers the phone down to his lap. “He’s right, you know. The alpha can take care of himself.”

Scott isn’t ‘the alpha.’ Scott was…Scott. Scott is the scrawny little kid was asthma and not enough common sense, except he’s not anymore, and sometimes Stiles hates that. God help him, but he hates that. “Can you just…not. Right now. Please.”

“Okay.” Jake reaches out and puts a hand on Stiles’s knee, which is one of the only places that doesn’t hurt. Much. “Okay.”

And Stiles closes his eyes and pretends that he doesn’t want to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left in Part One.
> 
> Also, I will be adding new tags when I start Part Two. Part Two is also going to be kind of super angsty, just as fair warning.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: anxiety and panic attack in this chapter.

The next day, Jake wheels him out of the hospital (because apparently you need to be wheeled out of hospitals even when you _don’t have any damage below your waist what the fuck why_ ) and to his car (and Stiles still hasn’t found out what the hell happened to his car), and he looks like he wants to physically lift Stiles out of the wheelchair and into the passenger’s seat, but that isn’t happening. Even if standing and bending and generally moving hurts his ribs. Because he has at least a little bit of dignity, which means a little bit of pain to get himself into the fucking car even if it fucking kills him.

It doesn’t kill him.

Though Jake looks like he might, glaring at Stiles as he pulls out of the hospital parking lot. “Are you a masochist? Seriously? Would it kill you to accept a little help?”

“Uh…maybe.”

Jake rolls his eyes, but it’s an angry eye-roll. Or maybe an exasperated one. They look kind of the same on Jake. “To which question?”

“I was answering the first, but it might apply to the other one, too.”

“Damn it, Stiles.” Jake reaches over and grabs the back of Stiles’s neck, holding on a little too hard.

“What the hell?”

Jake keeps driving like that, like it’s totally safe to drive with only one hand on the wheel (though, him being a werewolf, it’s probably a lot safer than, say, Stiles doing it. And (though he’d never admit it, at least not to Jake) the hand feels good where it is, warm and large and wow he doesn’t know why he ever thought he was straight when he was like twelve. But Jake doesn’t seem to want anything from him, because if he did he would have done something beyond that one kiss, and Stiles isn’t sure he wants anything from Jake, and this is really such a bad idea.

“You almost died.”

“Welcome to my life.”

Without warning, the car swerves and agony screeches through Stiles’s side, and Stiles starts looking around for what’s attacking them even as he kind of screams a little bit, and then he realizes that it’s Jake doing it, Jake pulling them over to the side of the road and stopping there even though that’s not really safe and there’s no particular reason to (and what the hell is going on). And then, almost before he finishes putting the car in park, Jake has his hands on either side of Stiles’s face, pressing too hard, and he forcing Stiles to meet his eyes. His crimson eyes.

“You almost died in a car crash in the middle of fucking nowhere without me around. You could have been dying and I wouldn’t have known until it was too late. I didn’t know until it was too late.”

Stiles tries to pull away, because ow that hurts, but Jake isn’t letting go, and every move seems to tighten his grip, which is really not what Stiles is aiming for. “Look, I’m still alive. And I’m kind of beat up, but I’m fine. And seriously, this is not the closest I’ve gotten to dying. Like, you have no idea.”

Jake honest-to-God growls at him. “That shouldn’t be happening to you. That’s _not supposed to happen to you_. You are not going to die.”

“Everyone dies eventually.” And he was going to be dead sooner rather than later, given what tends to happen around him.

Jake runs a hand through Stiles’s hair, and Stiles honestly cannot tell if he wants Jake to do that more or if he wants Jake to go fuck off somewhere else and stop being so goddamn (close, confusing, territorial) needy. So he just starts talking about death rates from the plague worldwide, because that’s what he does when he’s not sure what to do, and Jake just stares at him like he’s crazy (which is, of course, arguable) and then leans forward and rests his forehead against Stiles’s.

And Stiles just…shuts up, because he’s doesn’t have much to say, and talking with his face that close to another person is really awkward and kind of intimate and he would feel like he was screaming at them.

Finally, Jake pulls away, sighing. “Okay. I’m going to get you back to the dorm and give you your pain medication, and then we’re going to go from there.”

“I don’t need you to look after me.” Jake starts driving again, looking like he doesn’t think that that’s worth dignifying with a response, which seriously, it is. “I mean it. I know I’m human, but I can take care of myself.”

Finally, Jake looks at him again. “If I had just been in an accident and needed to heal, or if one of your human friends had been, would you help them?”

“I don’t have any human friends.”

Jake does a double take, and really, he needs to keep his eyes on the road. Stiles does not need to be in another accident. “What?”

“I don’t have any human friends. I mean, unless you count Scott’s mom, but that would be weird. No, I mean, there’s you guys, there’s Scott and Derek and Liam—if you count him as a friend—and Kira and Isaac and Malia and Lydia.”

“And they’re all werewolves?”

“What? No.” Hadn’t Stiles told him this? Maybe he hadn’t. He just kind of assumes that supernatural people know, but sometimes they don’t. Which makes sense. “No, Kira’s a kitsune and Malia’s a werecoyote and Lydia’s a banshee.”

“When was the last time you had human friends?”

“When Allison was still alive.” The words come out easier than he expected, but they burn, still, like acid tearing at his throat, and it shouldn’t still be this hard, but it is.

“Allison is…?”

“None of your business.” His tone is harsher than he planned, but he’s not going to talk about Allison with Jake. Not now. “Look, can we not do an interrogation at the moment? I’m tired and my ribs hurt and I really have no interest in doing this at the moment.”

“See?”

For God’s sake. “Fuck you. Seriously. Stop, or I’m going to throw my phone at your head.”

“Your phone is in my pocket.” Jake grins at him. “Have fun getting it out.”

“I’m going to sleep now.” And then Stiles curls up against the side of the car and tries to sleep, even though that makes his ribs hurt like a son of a bitch, because he can’t do this. He can’t do any of this. He was in a car accident and everything hurts and he has fucking classwork to do because he missed class and he doesn’t need Jake treating him like a helpless human because he can _take care of himself_ when he doesn’t have trees jumping out at him and everyone at home is doing things on their own and taking care of themselves and it feels like he’s being left behind and it sucks.

Sleep doesn’t come, but Jake lets him pretend.

At least until they get to the dorm, at which point Jake parks the car in the underground parking lot and says, “Time to get out. Unless you want me to carry you up.”

Stiles turns to look at him (which, like every movement of his torso, causes pain. He’s going to get sick of this soon). “You’re not going to carry me up.”

“Believe me, I’m perfectly capable of carrying you all the way up to your room via the stairs, but I figure I’ll compromise and just carry you to the elevator.”

Stiles shoves open the door and starts to get out, and go figure, his legs work. “I can walk mys—what the fuck are you doing?” Jake has managed to get out and walk around to pull Stiles into his arms like Stiles is his bride that he’s about to carry over the threshold. Which is not happening. None of it. Though flailing would probably be a bad idea because then Jake might drop him, and he really doesn’t want to break a wrist (or anything else) trying to catch himself. “Let me go.”

Jake grins down at him. “Nah.”

“You asshole. Let me go.” Because it feels good, where he is, but Stiles can’t do the thing where he lets himself be carted around and carried and looked after, because—because that’s not who he is. He’s stronger than that, he has to be, because otherwise he’s not going to survive whatever coming for him. And there’s something coming for him. There always is.

Jake stares down at him for a moment, holding him there with his arms totally steady like it’s no big deal to hold a hundred-whatever pound man like that (which for him it probably isn’t) and then something twists behind his eyes and he lowers Stiles to the ground, wrapping an arm under Stiles’s armpit to keep him up while Stiles finds his feet.

“Thank you.”

Jake nods. “You smell like pain.”

For God’s sake. “I’m going up to my room. You can come with me or not, but I’m going.”

They get to the elevator without too much trouble, and then it’s five floors up and they’re there, and Stiles really just wants to take some ibuprofen or whatever he has and then figure out how to sit on his bed and use his computer without making his chest hurt. More than it already is. Which is a lot. God, cracked ribs (rib) suck. And he’s silent for the five floors because he feels like he’s going to crawl out of his skin and he knows if he says anything he’s going to regret it

Because that’s how it works. He says things and sometimes they’re the wrong things, and he doesn’t always know it until the words are already out and someone’s looking at him like he just stabbed their cat.

And then he’s in his room and lowering himself down onto his bed and it hurts (everything hurts, and fuck, car accidents suck) and it feels like he’s holding myself by a piece of string and some glue, and it’s only barely working.

Sometimes he hates being human.

Jake is standing over him, looking concerned and hovery and all over not too happy with the situation (join the club) when something hits Stiles (but not hits him like with something, not impaled, _Derek was impaled_ and he can’t breathe for a second and there’s nothing and it’s like he lost his goddamn mind when he was hit by that car). “Where’s Derek?”

Jake shrugs like it’s no big deal, like he doesn’t care, and Stiles doesn’t believe it for a second (and what is it with werewolves and being shitty liars? Shouldn’t they be better at it?). “He finally learned his place and left.”

Wait, what the hell is that supposed to mean? “Did he say anything?” Jake shrugs again. “Okay, give me my phone.”

“You need to rest.”

“I need to talk to Derek.” (Because something is wrong, Stiles knows something is wrong, and he needs to know what it is, needs to fix it. Needs to fix something.) “Now give me my phone before I figure out how to take it from you.” Which would first require figuring out how to get up, but he could do that. Probably.

Jake hesitates, then pulls Stiles’s cell from his pocket and hands it over, and Stiles turns it on and sees for the first time that he has a text from his dad from the night of the accident saying _Prsh in Seatl Brwdr sick cant come call me ASAP_. Which explains why his dad wasn’t next to him in the hospital. “Knock yourself out.”

“Thanks. Now go wait in the hall and don’t listen in.”

Jake bares his teeth. “I’m your alpha.”

“Seriously?”

There is another second of Jake staring at him, and then he stands and walks out of the room. Stiles waits a minute (or like twelve seconds, but he’s impatient, so sue him) then dials Derek’s number (which _is_ under Wolfy, damn it) and waits, lowering himself down onto the bed with his feet hanging off because sitting up hurts.

Two rings in, Derek picks up. “What?”

“You left without saying anything.”

Derek’s voice goes stiff (and how a voice can do that, Stiles isn’t sure, but it figures that Derek is the one to figure out how to manage it). “I didn’t want to keep interfering with his pack.”

“Right. That. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You declared yourself packless and then accepted his offer. So you’re part of his pack now.”

Stiles tries to sit up at that, which goes super not well and leaves him clutching his stomach and gasping for air. “What? That was just me saying that I’m not, you know, _part_ of Scott’s pack.”

“Exactly.”

“Because I’m not. I’m human. I’m like—you know how libraries have ‘friends of the library’ who give money and stuff? I’m like a friend of the pack, only without the money. But you guys are practically my family.”

“You are pack—or were, before you disowned us.” And with that, Derek hangs up on him.

Air isn’t coming into his lungs, and he sits up and his side _screams_ with pain, and he tries not to cry out as he stumbles to his feet and over to his door and locks it, and there’s a crunching noise like plastic against plastic and his phone drops out of nerveless fingers and he turns and presses himself against the door, arms curled around his chest as he tries to breathe. But the air still isn’t coming, and he can’t see through the tears and everything is turning gray around the edges and he almost doesn’t care because if he blacks out then he won’t need to think about the fact that he might have just made the worst mistake of his life and he has no idea what the fuck he’s going to do to fix it or if he can fix it. Because some things couldn’t be fixed. He had learned that the hard way.

And oh God, that makes him think of Allison and Boyd and Erica (they’re dead, they’re all dead, and it’s like a weight against his ribs, like a hand squeezing his chest because they were hunters and werewolves and weren’t supposed to die like that, and everyone dies around him and maybe he’s just a poison, a poison, a plague on all of their houses, all of those goddamn clichés, and he hates himself).

The knob rattles, then rattles again, and then there’s a knock on the door, and Stiles shoves a fist against his mouth because he needs to bite down on something, needs to feel something, and he doesn’t want Jake to hear. “Stiles. Let me in.” He bites down harder, and you can bite hard enough to break fingers, but not to yourself, and he thinks maybe if he tries hard enough he could do it to himself. There are a few more knocks. “Stiles. Come on. Let me in. Whatever’s going on, I can help. You just need to let me in.”

“Leave me alone.” The words come out around his fist, but he can’t get himself to take his teeth off his knuckles. "You’re not supposed to be listening.” And then he’s gasping in breath again, around the fist, around the rock in his throat and the boulder on his chest and the goddamn fucking dead people closed around his neck and the mistake filling his lungs with acid.

“Stiles. You’re hyperventilating. Please let me in.”

He is hyperventilating, and it feels like a knife to his ribs, and he doesn’t care because it’s what he deserves and he has to fix this has to fix this _has to fix this_.

Inspiration (desperation) strikes him and he falls to his knees (pain, agony, a blade through his lungs), grabbing his phone and dialing before sticking it to his ear, and the ringing vibrates through his teeth as he tries to breathe.

“Deaton.”

All of the breath leaves Stiles’s lungs, and then he breathes in again and says, in as normal a voice as he can manage. “Hi. It’s Stiles.”

“Mr. Stilinski. What can I do for you?”

(He fucked up, and he doesn’t know what to do.) “I, uh, need some advice. Supernatural-y advice. Because I screwed up and I’m not sure how to fix it and I can’t ask Scott because it’s about Scott and nobody else in the” (pack, but it’s not his pack anymore, and he never meant to do that, never meant for that to happen, never thought he was really part of it in the first place) “group would know how to answer. Because it’s not like any of us were really prepared for this, and throwing people headfirst into a world with new rules that nobody tells that isn’t going to end well, and I’m not saying that as an excuse, but it’s just that they wouldn’t be able to give me an answer.”

Deaton sighs. “What is your question?”

Something loosens just a little bit in Stiles’s chest, like a string with a thousand knots having just one untied. “So I made friends here, at college, and then I found out that they’re werewolves, and one of them is one of the alphas for a pack down in SoCal.”

“Jacob Errin.”

“You’ve heard of him? Of course you’ve heard of him, why am I even asking that. Yeah. Jake. And he offered me a spot in his pack, but he had me say that I was packless first, which I did because…I’m human. And I’m not, you know, in the pack, or I wasn’t, I didn’t think, but apparently I was, and now I’m not, and I’m in Jake’s pack, but I can’t lose Scott and everyone else, and I don’t know how to fix this.”

There is a pause, like Deaton’s thinking things through (because he’s Deaton, and that’s what he does), and then he asks, “What exactly do you want to do?”

“What do you _think_ I want to do?”

“I’m not sure, Mr. Stilinski, that’s why I asked you. Would you like to rejoin Scott’s pack, or simply remain his friend outside of the pack structure? Would you like to leave Mr. Errin’s pack and act as his friend outside of the pack structure?”

“Can’t I just be in both packs?”

Another pause. “As you are human, there is a chance it will be possible, but it may be difficult for you, and either Scott or your new pack’s alphas may not allow it. So I suggest you take a day and figure out what it is you want, and then you call Scott and talk to him.”

“Okay. Okay, I can do that. Thank you.”

“I would say any time, Mr. Stilinkski, but…”

Yeah. Right. Funny. “Also, my dad said that there was something around the border of the town. How is that—what’s happening with that?”

“It is closer than we would like, and we are still not sure what it is, but we will be able to handle it.”

“Yeah. Just…if you need any help—”

“We can handle in. Goodbye.” And then he hangs up.

Stiles holds onto his phone for another few seconds, clutching it to his ear, then sinks back, working through the pain as the movement makes everything hurt. He’s going to have to get up soon, do his homework, figure out what he’s missed, but for right now, he’s just going to sit on the floor with his back to the door and breathe. Because he has a plan, and maybe, this time, it’s all going to be okay.

\--

The first time Scott doesn’t pick up, Stiles figures he’s busy. The second time, he figures he’s ignoring him. The third time, he gets worried.

One hand clutched around his ribs because his attempt at not hyperventilating is pushing the pain past the vague haze of not-hurt from the medication he took a few hours ago, Stiles calls his dad, because if anyone’s going to know what’s going on, it’s him (and isn’t that a change from a few years ago, when Stiles spent all of his energy trying to keep his dad out of this clusterfuck that has become his life).

“Stilinksi.”

“Dad. Hi.”

“Stiles. Is everything okay? Have you gotten out of the hospital yet?”

Stiles can’t do this small talk, not right now, and he hunches over a little more on himself. “Yeah, yeah, I’m out of the hospital, but I was trying to call Scott, and he’s not picking up, and with the thing being there I thought something might have happened, and I don’t know what’s going on because I’m _not there_ , so I need to know if Scott’s okay, if everyone’s okay, if something happened.”

There’s a long, ugly pause, and Stiles’s breaths are coming faster and faster because _silence means something is wrong_ , and he doesn’t want to hyperventilate again because that shit hurts with a cracked rib (everything hurts with a cracked rib), and he hasn’t hated his anxiety this much in fucking years because he feels off-balance and wrong and it’s clouding every thought that he has until a missed call means someone’s dead, and maybe this is all ridiculous.

And then, in a voice that’s part cop-with-victim and part cop-with-crazy-person, his dad asks, “Stiles, who are you talking about?”

* * *

 

END OF PART ONE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part One is officially over. Yay!
> 
> So here's the deal: I plan to start posting Part Two next Monday (7/27). My current plan is to keep the schedule of posting on Mondays and Fridays. That may change once the school year starts, but for now, that's the idea.
> 
> Also, it makes me cringe every time they have Kira doing sword fighting, because she basically wields it like a baseball bat and does a lot of unnecessary spinning of her sword and doesn't actually aim at anything when she's fighting. Like, if you're fighting something, especially something with armor or very few points of vulnerability (see S3 Oni), you need to actually aim, or you're wasting your time. Like, if you just sort of slight arbitrarily AT THE ARMOR, nothing is going to be accomplished. (Okay, rant over.)


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part two has arrived! Also, new tags are up, so check them out. The overall feeling is going to be a bit different because it's a lot angstier, but I hope you still like it.

PART TWO

* * *

 

 It takes Stiles a minute to respond (he can’t do this, not today, he can’t), and then he forces a grin because his father needs to hear it. “What are you talking about? Scott. You know, Scott. Scott McCall, my best friend since forever, true alpha, etcetera, etcetera.”

“Scott…McCall.” His father is quiet for a few seconds, and Stiles’s breathing overshadows it, harsh and ragged (and oh shit what’s going on). “He was your friend in high school, right? You had some kind of falling out sophomore year after the two of you snuck out into the woods and then you left him there and he had an asthma attack. I remember that. What’s this true alpha business? Some kind of video game thing?”

No. No. Whatever’s going on can’t be happening. “It’s—he’s my _friend_ , he has been since—we never had a falling out. We—he’s a werewolf, dad, that was when he was turned into a werewolf.”

“Very funny, Stiles. I have work to do. And I’m glad you’re out of the hospital, but maybe you need to go back, get your head checked.”

“Dad—” And then there’s a click, and he’s gone.

Stiles sucks in a deep breath, holds it, and then immediately starts dialing Deaton, because if he gives himself time to think he’s going to break down and he can’t do that. Not right now.

“Deaton.”

“It’s Stiles.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is. Do you have an animal at the clinic?”

(He can’t do this. He can’t do this. He can’t do this.) “No, I—I’m Stiles. You know, best friend of Scott, your assistant-slash-werewolf. Not that he’s your werewolf. He’s his own werewolf. He’s just your assistant.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re—”

“If this is some bullshit ‘you left the pack so I have to pretend you don’t exist’ thing, I literally just talked to you yesterday, so you can drop it.”

“I’m fairly certain I’ve never spoken to you before in my life, so if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.” And then Deaton hangs up, and it’s just like his dad, and Stiles’s hands are shaking and he can’t see clearly and he has do something because this is all wrong.

He tries to dial Lydia’s number, his fingers slipping from the screen because they’re trembling so hard, and there’s a low whimpering noise that he’s pretty sure is coming from him, but he can’t think about it (his thoughts glancing off of the possibilities but not sticking not yet he can’t he can’t he can’t), but finally he gets it, and her voice is there. “Stiles? This had better be important, because I just pulled myself away from a very…informative _menage à trois_ for this.”

He didn’t let himself loosen the knot inside him this time. “Do you know who I am?”

“Of course I know who you are. Why?”

“And Scott. Do you know who Scott is?”

“I know who Scott is. Why?”

But she had gone to high school with Scott. She could remember him from that. “Do you know _what_ Scott is?”

Lydia makes an irritated noise. “Scott McCall is a small furry woodland creature masquerading as a werewolf. Why are you asking me these questions?”

Some of the tension drops away, leaving the acrid taste of fear and determination on his tongue. “I just talked to my dad, who doesn’t remember that I’m still friends with Scott, and Deaton, who doesn’t remember who I am, and Scott’s not answering his phone. Something’s wrong, and I don’t know what it is, but I think it’s bad.”

Lydia goes to her business voice (one that he’s heard too many times and in too many bad situations). “Go back to the beginning and tell me everything you know.”

Stiles props himself up against the wall so he can take some of the tension off of his ribs, saying, “I spoke to Deaton yesterday, and he knew who I was. There’s been something around the border of Beacon Hills for a few days, at least, and they don’t know what it is, or at least they didn’t. I tried calling Scott today, and after the third time of him not picking up, I called my dad. When I talked to him, he thought I hadn’t been friends with Scott since partway through high school, and Deaton didn’t know who I was, or at least claimed not to.”

“Why were you calling Deaton yesterday?”

“That’s not really relevant right now.”

“It could be.”

“It’s _not_.”

Lydia sighs. “Okay. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to Beacon Hills. Can you call Parrish and Jackson, make sure they’re okay? I’m going to call Isaac and—” Fuck.

“And what?”

“Kira’s in Beacon Hills right now, or she should be. Okay, once I get there, I’ll check to see who’s around, who’s there, what people remember, and then go from there, try to figure out what’s going on.”

“I’ll get there tomorrow.”

Stiles shakes his head even though (obviously) she can’t see him. “No, stay where you are. I may need someone on the outside to help.”

“You shouldn’t go there alone.”

“I’ll be fine.” And whatever is going on, he can’t lose Lydia, too. “Just…keep in touch with me, please. I don’t want you to drop off the map, too.”

She wants to argue more (he can practically see it, the set of her mouth just so), but instead she says, “Be careful, and if it’s taking you too long, I’m heading over there.”

“Lydia—”

“Call me after you’ve talked to Isaac. And Stiles?”

 (Panic.) “Yeah?”

“Breathe.” And then she hangs up, and he pulls the phone away from his ear, and he still can’t think about it (because if he thinks about it it becomes real, and it’s like how he was always afraid of his mind slipping away and then one day he woke up and couldn’t read, and he can’t do that again, not again, can’t lose the things that matter to him).

So he pulls his pillow onto his lap so he can hold it to himself and pretend it’s something that would actually give him real comfort, then dials Isaac’s number. It takes five rings for him to pick up, and by the time his voice comes on the line, Stiles is shaking, hand knocking against his knee because he can’t figure out how to get it to stop.

“What the fuck do you want?”

Stiles exhales shakily, the breath catching on every bump and ragged edge in his mouth. “Do you know who I am?”

Isaac groans. “What the fuck, Stiles? It’s like three in the morning, and I feel like someone just tried to bite their way through my skull. What do you want?”

“Something’s wrong.”

Another groan, and then rustling like Isaac is sitting up. “If this is just you being drunk and calling me—”

“Do I sound drunk?”

“You always sound drunk.”

Stiles laughs despite himself. “Fuck you. I’m serious, something’s wrong. Scott isn’t answering his phone, and my dad claims not to remember who Scott is and Deaton claims not to remember who I am.”

There’s silence for a second, and then Isaac lets out a soft, “Shit. What about the rest of the pack?”

“I called Lydia, who’s checking on Parrish and Jackson. I don’t know about anyone who’s in Beacon Hills. Are you okay?”

“Like I said, my head feels like it’s about to explode, but I’m still alive. What about Kira?”

His hand is shaking again. “Kira is in Beacon Hills, or at least she’s supposed to be. I’m heading there once I’m done talking to you, so I can figure out what’s going on.”

“You should call everyone else, first, see if anyone picks up.”

“I don’t have _time_.” His voice goes up embarrassingly at the end, and it feels like he’s about to cry, his throat tight and eyes burning (because it’s happening, it’s happening again, and he should have done something to stop it and it’s all his fault).

“Better than running in there with no idea what’s going on. I can— _ah, désolé. Retourne dormir._ Sorry. I can call some of them—Derek and Kira, maybe? And then you can call Liam and Malia, because I don’t really know them.”

“Fine.” Stiles swallows. “Fine. We can do that.”

Isaac is quiet for a few seconds, and then, in a small voice, he asks, “What if I feel like this because Scott and Derek are dead and I don’t have an alpha anymore?”

Stiles barely makes it to the garbage can before he’s throwing up everything in his stomach.

\--

Liam doesn’t pick up, and neither does Malia, and Stiles spends another five minutes dry-heaving until it feels like his ribs have snapped in half and impaled his lungs, and then he sits on the floor against his bed and dials Lydia’s number.

She picks up immediately. “Took you long enough. What were you doing, having phone sex with Isaac?”

“He thought we should call the rest of the pack, so I called Malia and Liam and he’s calling Derek and Kira and they didn’t pick up and I don’t know what to do.” It all comes out in one breath, and then he’s gasping for air again, and this is starting to become a really unfortunate habit.

She makes an unhappy noise. “Jackson picked up, but Parrish didn’t.”

That didn’t make sense, because Parrish was— “Shit, he’s in Seattle. I saw my dad said that. I don’t know if he’s—I don’t know why he’d be there, but he might not be able to pick up his phone.”

“Okay.” Lydia exhales. “Okay. So he might be okay.”

“Yeah.” Stiles scrubs a hand against his phone. “I’ll find out when I get there, see if anyone remembers him. If they do, he’s probably fine. I think.” He hopes, but he’s flying blind at this point, and it’s like every goddamn time he thinks he has things under control the supernatural world throws him another curve ball, and he doesn’t even play baseball. “I’m going to head back to Beacon Hills now. And if they’re gone—if they’re really gone—I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know if I’m going to—I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“If that happens, you’re going to call me, and we’re going to figure it out. And don’t do anything stupid, Stiles, I mean it.”

“I’m the kid who dragged my asthmatic best friend out to try to find half of a dead body in the woods in the middle of the night. I think we’re past that at this point.”

Lydia snorts. “I’d like to say you’ve matured since then, but we both know that’d be a lie. But I’m serious. You have friends, people who care about you. You can ask for help. And if you need any research done, call me instead of trying to do it all yourself.”

“You have school.”

“So do you, but you’re heading back to Beacon Hills to try to save our friends. Good luck.”

“Thanks.” And then Stiles hangs up, holding his phone in his two hands—one whole, one half-broken. It feels like a metaphor for his life, and isn’t that a depressing thought.

\--

Stiles takes a second to collect himself and figure out what he needs before he leaves. He’s going to need to catch a bus, because he still has no idea where his car is—or even if it’s drivable—so he’ll need to take the school shuttle to the station. He has basically a full wardrobe at school, so…laptop (and charger, can’t forget that), phone charger, ibuprofen, extra ace bandages for his ribs, one of his jumbo-sized band-aid boxes for in case he starts bleeding between school and home (where his first-aid kit is). He needs to email his professors, too, but he can do that on the bus. He’ll leave a note for Sun, too (who’s apparently been holing up at Katie’s for whatever reason). And that’s it. Everything else he can get or do at home.

And so maybe…maybe he’s ready to go. As terrifying as it is, he has to leave as soon as possible, and the sooner he gets going the less likely it is that he’ll talk himself out of going—or into doing something spectacularly stupid. He’s not sure what spectacularly stupid thing he could manage to do in this case, but there’s surely something, and he can inevitably find it if he puts his mind to it (because he let them go, and now they’re gone, and he might never get them back).

Shutting off his computer, he stores it in his backpack, then hoists it up on his less-bruised shoulder, biting down on his lip to keep from whimpering because holy shit that hurts his ribs. Then he heads out his door and into the hallway—where a hand closes around his wrist, too hard against the bruises there, and pulls him to a stop. In front of Jake, who’s standing there even though his room is all the way down the hall.

Stiles’s heart pounds in his chest for one long second as he reminds himself that it’s Jake (Jake is safe, Jake isn’t going to hurt him, Jake has nothing to do with what’s going on), and then irritation rushes through him even as his shoulders slump. “Really? Are you going to pretend that you were just passing by even though there’s nothing in this direction, or have you been stalking me?”

Jake stares at him, and there’s something drawn in his expression. “It doesn’t count as stalking if we live in the same place and you haven’t gone anywhere. Where are you going?”

Stiles tries to pull his arm away, which accomplishes exactly nothing other than making him look ridiculous and making Kiernan Molloy (who saw the kiss, who knows that Stiles is out, and wow, he had managed to forget that before) shoot them both a weird look before walking past. “Stop manhandling me.”

Jake doesn’t let go. “Where are you going?”

“You mean you haven’t been listening to my phone conversations?” And that’s a whole kettle of fish Stiles hadn’t even thought about because he’s been so distracted. “Would you be asking your pack buddies that?”

“Yes.” Jake backs him, gently, into the wall, which pisses him off because if Jake is going to be a dick he should at least be honest about it and not pretend he’s doing it out of some misguided desire for Stiles’s safety. And also because he can’t get free, even is Jake is being gentle, because he’s just a goddamn human, and he _hates_ that. “Where are you going?”

Stiles throws up his free hand, which pulls at the bruising and his ribs and leaves him gasping for breath, which of course Jake immediately notices and narrows his eyes at. “Fine. I’m going to Beacon Hills, because something is happening and I need to—”

“No.”

Planting his free hand (which, hey, isn’t the broken one) on Jake’s chest, Stiles shoves, and Jake steps back one step. And doesn’t let go. Motherfucker. “Get off me. I’m going home and figuring out what the hell is going on with my friends, and you’re not going to stop me.”

“It’s not safe.”

Nothing is safe. Nothing is ever safe, and Stiles can’t believe he knows that better than a werewolf, except apparently Jake has never had anything go wrong (except that psycho mom comment, and the quip about going power hungry, but he can’t worry about that, not now). “I’m not Bella and you’re not Edward and this isn’t Twilight, so back the fuck off. Who are you to tell me what I can or can’t do?”

Jake’s eyes go red, and Stiles really fucking hopes nobody is around to see this because this will be super hard to explain. Though he’s leaving so that’ll be Jake’s problem. And then Jake snarls, “You’re my _mate_ ,” and Stiles forgets about that because, what the fuck.

It takes Stiles a second, and then he manages to get out the first thing that pops into his head, which is, “You never asked me.”

Jake stares at him for a long time, so long Stiles thinks he might scream or hit him or do something else dramatic, and then he drops his grip on Stiles’s wrist and steps back, scrubbing a hand across his face. And, fuck, he looks devastated. “You’re right. I didn’t.”

Stiles wants to comfort him, almost, except he doesn’t have time for this, and he just…can’t. Not right now. “I have to go.”

Jake looks up at him, and there’s something absolutely miserable in his eyes. But then his shoulders straighten and he says, “Come on.”

What the hell is going on now? “Where are you going?”

A shrug, and Jake looks almost normal again, a smirk across his too-red lips and his eyes no longer playing second-string traffic lights. “Your car’s fucked to hell, right? So I’ll drive.”

“You’re not driving me all the way to Beacon Hills just to drive all the way back. That’s ridiculous.”

A hand is reaching out and snatching Stiles’s backpack away before he can stop it, and then Jake slings it over one shoulder. “You’re right, it is. I’m going to stay, and I’m going to help.”

Stiles shakes his head. “You can’t. This isn’t your problem.”

“You’re my pack and I’m your alpha, so it is. And if going with you and helping you help your friends is what’s needed to keep you safe, I’ll do it. We’re wasting time. Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please tell me if my French is wrong. I haven't done imperatives in like 2 years, so the conjugation might be off.
> 
> Next chapter will be up Friday, 7/31.


	15. Chapter 15

They make it to Beacon Hills in record time, due mostly to the fact that Jake drives like he can’t read the speed limit signs, and Stiles spends the time emailing his professors to tell them that he’s going home to recover from his car accident and that he’ll do the work as promptly as possible and then trying not to cry or have a panic attack. And there’s no way (absolutely no way) Jake can’t smell the panic, but he lets Stiles get away with it (except for when he puts a hand on the back of Stiles’s neck and pushes him down slowly, as far as his ribs will allow, and tells Stiles to breathe).

Even with that, it’s still nighttime when they get there, and Stiles’s dad is at home, case files that he probably shouldn’t be taking home (not that that ever stopped him before) in his hands, feet propped up on the table. He looks up when Stiles and Jake walk in.

“What are you—” He gets to his feet, setting the case files on the table, and strides towards him. “You look like hell.”

Stiles laughs, which almost turns into a sob. “Thanks, Dad. I mean, I’ve looked worse, but—”

“No, you haven’t.”

Wow, revisionist history much. “You mean other than when Gerard Argent beat the hell out of me in his basement, or when the Nogitsune was draining my life force?”

His dad looks confused, which is scary as hell because Stiles cannot start doubting his own memories or he will lose everything. He will. He can’t do that. “Stiles, what are you talking about?”

“What am I—” The sobs start to seriously threaten to come out, and Jake’s fingers thread through his (and he doesn’t know if he’s ever been more grateful for something in his life). “Can we play twenty questions or something?”

“Stiles, seriously, what are you doing here? You should be at school, not back in Beacon Hills. And who are you?”

Jake steps forward to he’s just behind Stiles, the heat of him (and goddamn he’s like a furnace) pressed against Stiles’s back. “Jake Errin. I’m Stiles’s friend from school.”

His dad’s eyes goes to their hands, then up to Jake’s face. “I can see that. Okay, Stiles, I’ll bite, but then you’re telling me why you’re here and not at school where you’re supposed to be.”

“Deal.” Stiles tries to let go of Jake’s hand so he can walk over to a chair because his ribs are really start to bother him, but Jake holds on, so he just pulls him along, Jake perching on the arm of the chair and setting the backpack down next to it as Stiles lowers himself down as gingerly as he can. “Okay, uh, what can you tell me about Derek Hale?”

Sitting again, his dad stares at him for a second before shaking his head. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but… Derek Hale, let me see. I don’t know much. His family died in a fire what must have been over ten years ago at this point, and he and his sister moved out to New York, I think. Last I heard he’s working on his PhD.”

Shit. “Malia? Malia Tate?”

“She’s the girl we found in the woods a couple of years ago. She’s living with her father.”

“Kira Yukimura?”

His dad throws out an irritated hand. “I have no idea. The name sounds Japanese, and I think I remember a teacher at your school having that surname, so…is that who it is? Actually, don’t answer that. Answer this: what’s going on?”

Stiles grits his teeth, because he doesn’t know (hates this, hates not knowing, always has) how to explain this to his dad when his dad doesn’t seem to remember…anything. Not anything important, at least. “I—it’s really complicated. But I have to be here.”

“You _have_ to be at school. Or resting, because don’t think I didn’t see how you’re moving.”

“My ribs are fine.”

“Except for the cracked one,” Jake mutters, and Stiles hits him, because damn it, he wasn’t going to mention that.

His dad turns on Jake. “And you. I’m still not sure what you’re doing here, but shouldn’t you be at school, too? And for that matter, do your parents even know you’re here?”

Jake shrugs. “My parents are dead, so no, not so much. My sister will in about an hour or so when I text her, and she’ll inevitably tell the rest of my exceedingly extended family, if that answers your question.”

“It answers the second part, though I’m still not convinced on the first because ‘it’s complicated’ isn’t a sufficient reason to skip school.”

Oh for God’s sake; Stiles can’t do this right now. “Is ‘I want to recover from my car accident not in a college dorm room’ sufficient?”

His dad stares at him for a second, then sighs, “For now, it is. Now go to bed, both of you. And not together.”

Stiles thinks about standing (and the not insignificant amount of pain that’s going to cause, then hesitates. “One last weird question.”

“Yes?”

“Parrish—Deputy Parrish. Where is he?”

“Why do you—he’s at a counter-terrorism convention in Seattle. And if you’re thinking about pumping him for information on whatever the hell it is you’re looking for, don’t bother. It’s apparently so hush-hush they can’t have their phones for the whole conference.” Stiles sags in relief, which really fucking hurts, and then Jake’s hand is on his side, draining the pain, and Stiles lets himself breathe. “Now go to bed. I mean it.”

They make their way upstairs, and Stiles stops in front of his bedroom, holding his hand out for his backpack. “Come on. Give it. You can sleep in the guest room next door.”

Jake eyes him a bit suspiciously, like he thinks Stiles is about to either burst into song or collapse. Neither of which is true, though if Jake doesn’t give him his bag, so help him. I think I’ll carry it in for you. I don’t want you straining yourself.”

“Jake—”

“I want to smell your bedroom,” Jake says, and apparently the training wheels are off and he’s on to being the big bad overprotective alpha now, “and make sure there are no threats. I’m going to do it whether you want me to or not; I’d just rather you gave me permission.”

For once, Stiles might actually be too exhausted to argue. “Fine. Come on.”

Jake sniffs out his room for a few seconds, face human but eyes red, and then he turns to Stiles. “You said your alpha comes here, hangs out with you?”

“Yeah.” Jake doesn’t look convinced, so Stiles adds, “But it’s been a while, you know, because of college and everything. The scent might be faded by now.” The scent of Derek, too, but he’s not going to explain that unless absolutely necessary.

Jake’s frown deepens. “There should still be something, though, especially with nothing to mask it, but your room doesn’t smell like a werewolf has ever set foot in it before me.”

“Which means…?”

Jake shakes his head. “I don’t know. I—honestly, I don’t know. But you need some sleep, so we can figure it out in the morning.” He rests on a hand on Stiles’s arm, then turns to go.

“Jake.” Jake turns, one eyebrow raised. Stiles sticks his hand out. “My bag.”

Color rises in Jake’s neck. “Right. Sorry.” He drops it on the bed, bypassing Stiles’s hand (overprotective bastard) then gives Stiles a sheepish smile. “Well, goodnight.”

“Thank you.”

Jake glances at the bag. “No problem.”

Stiles takes a step towards him, but doesn’t get close. He doesn’t know if he can, not now, not in this room that should smell like his friends but doesn’t. “I mean it. Thanks.”

“I mean it,” Jake echoes back, and smiles. “No problem.” And then he turns and walks out, the door closing with unnerving finality behind him (or maybe Stiles is just sick of people walking away, even when he tells them to go).

It takes Stiles a long time to get to sleep that night.

\--

Stiles wakes up in such an ungodly amount of pain he’s not sure how he’s still conscious. His ribs feel like somebody took a sledgehammer to half of them, or maybe just dropped an anvil on his chest while he was sleeping, his fingers are somehow managing to both itch and throb simultaneously, and his head feels like a drill had been taken to his temples and then bored into his forehead for good measure.

And his pain meds are in a bag on the floor halfway across the room.

Stiles braces himself on his good hand and pushes, trying to shift far enough to get his feet on the floor (because motherfucker but he will crawl if he has to to get to those pills, and wow, is that what an addict thinks), but his body is apparently not on board with that plan, because his ribs protest like something is _shattering_ , and he jams the uninjured part of his free hand into his mouth to keep from screaming.

Fuckity fucking motherfucker.

Okay, Plan A is not going to happen. Time to move on to the (much less preferred) Plan B.

“Jake?”

A second later, the door swings open to reveal a very shirtless Jake. Who looks concerned. Which is apparently becoming a norm. “Stiles?”

Stiles extracts his hand from his mouth to wave vaguely in the direction of his bag. “Could you grab my pain medication from my bag? Please?”

Jake is striding over and rifling through the bag before the words finish leaving Stiles’s mouth, so his head is down when he says, “You smell like so much pain.”

Stiles sighs, lowering himself back down and pressing his eyes closed because it is so fucking bright in his room, what the fuck. “Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you’re in a car accident and then have to go save your dumbass who have managed to had…something done to them. And I think sleeping broke my head.”

Jake locates the bottle, pulling it out and heading over to Stiles. “Do you need water or can you dry-swallow these?”

Stiles waves a pitiful hand towards him, because hello, broken head. “Pills. Now. Please. Head broken. Need drugs.”

Jake opens the bottle and hands it to Stiles, who dry swallows two pills (which is harder than one might think while completely horizontal) then hands the bottle back. “Better?”

Stiles squints at him. “That’s not how pills work, you know. They’re not instantaneous.”

“Oh.” Jake shrugs. “I’m not used to human medication. Or, really, medication. At all.” He perches on the edge of the bed (which makes the bed dip, and ugh, that is not helping his head). “How long will it take?”

“I don’t know.” Stiles can barely think right now. “Time.”

Jake stays where he is for a second, and Stiles closes his eyes because the light really isn’t helping his headache, and then suddenly there are hands on his head, moving it (and his upper body along with it) onto Jake’s lap. Which is very ow.

“What the fuck?”

Jake’s hands card through his hair then settle against the side of his face, and they feel nice and warm and the pain starts to sort of drain away a little bit. “I’ll make up the difference until the medication kicks in.

Stiles tries to shift so he can see Jake better through his not-really-open eyes, but that is a bad idea according to his head, so he stops, saying, “You don’t want my head in your lap,” because his hair is gross because he hasn’t showered in too fucking long and because his entire body is covered in pain-sweat.

Jake laughs, which makes his entire lap shake, but he’s draining enough pain at this point that the movement doesn’t send shards of pain through his head. “Oh, believe me, I want your head in my lap.” Stiles makes a noise he can’t quite control, and Jake laughs again, thumb pressing down on Stiles’s cheekbone. “Close your eyes and sleep for a little bit more, until the pain medication kicks in.”

Stiles wants to argue, but he already feels like he’s drifting, like the pain was the only thing anchoring him to the world and now that it’s gone he’s not really there anymore, and he drifts off before he can figure out how to open his mouth and respond.

He drifts back into consciousness to the feeling of fingers tracing his lips (and there’s something to ask about that, he knows there is, but he doesn’t know what it is right now), and then a voice—Jake’s voice, that’s Jake, and those are Jake’s fingers, too—says, “We should head to Deaton’s soon.”

Stiles opens his eyes open to blink at Jake’s face. “What?”

“Deaton? That’s his name, right, the man you wanted us to talk to?”

Oh. Yeah. Right. Deaton. “Yeah.” Stiles tries to lever himself up, and Jake helps, propping Stiles up so Stiles is leaning half against his shoulder and half against the wall behind him. And then they sit like that for just a second, and they both pretend it’s just so Stiles can catch his breath.

\--

They stop on the way to Deaton’s to grab food because Jake as a werewolf needs basically a constant caloric intake and Stiles is hungry for the first time in days. Stiles orders chocolate chip pancakes and bacon (because his dad isn’t here, and so he can do that without worrying about his dad stealing some and clogging his arteries) and Jake orders chocolate chip pancakes, bacon, sausages, waffles, and chicken noodle soup.

The waitress shoots him a dubious look at the end of the order. “You want some of that packed up, or is someone else joining you?”

Jake shakes his head. “No, it’s all for me. Thanks.”

“Okay.” She looks one more time at the bruises dotting Stiles’s visible skin, then stows her pad and walks away.

Stiles looks at him. “You eat a lot, but not usually that much at one time.”

Jake nods. “My intake increases when I’m under stress, because my metabolism speeds up. A lot.”

“You’re under stress?” Because Stiles knows he himself is, but Jake is the picture of calm.

This elicits a snort from Jake. “You smell like pain and unhappiness constantly, and I’m in someone else’s territory without their permission, so yeah, I’m under stress.”

Oh. “About that, actually. When Derek was in the hospital with me and you, he said something about getting permission from Elizabeth to be there, but I thought your territory was in SoCal.”

Jake laughs. “You were barely lucid for that conversation; I have no idea how you remember it. But you’re right. Mostly. Our true territory is in SoCal, but as the only pack occupying that territory around the college and the hospital, it is considered our territory for the time and the respectful thing is to treat it as such when passing through, et cetera.”

“That’s pretty cool, actually. Most of the stuff like that we just kind of learn or make up on the fly, so it’s nice to have a definitive answer on something before the fact.”

“What about Hale? Why isn’t he telling you this stuff?”

“Derek? I think he just doesn’t know a lot of it, because he was never supposed to be alpha and because his parents never got around to teaching him. And I think he kind of assumes things are instinctual that aren’t, at least not to bitten wolves.” Something hits him. “Wait, when you first met me, did you think I was trespassing?”

“For about thirty seconds. But the thing is that you smelled like a pack, but you’re human, and the rules work differently for you.” The waitress comes over with the first of the plates of food, and he breaks off to smile at her. “Thank you.”

The second set of plates comes with a stack of napkins, and the waitress pushes a few towards Stiles, giving his bruises one last look, and walks away. Stiles picks up the top one, looks it over, and starts to laugh.

Jake glances up at him, a half-smile on his face. “What?”

Stiles turns it over to show it to him. “It’s the number for a domestic abuse hotline.” A low growl comes from Jake’s throat as he snatches the napkin away, and Stiles shakes his head. “Really? I know you’re not abusing me.” Not that they’re a thing, but that doesn’t really seem work pointing out at the moment.

“Bad enough that you smell like pain all the goddamn time now,” Jake growled, “but now she thinks I’m causing it?”

“The murderous look on your face isn’t really helping your case,” Stiles points out, and Jake grimaces and crumples the napkin into a ball.

“Eat your pancakes.”

Stiles mock-salutes, because he’s an asshole sometimes (And totally willing to acknowledge it). “Yes, sir.”

Jake rolls his eyes, and they’re good.

\--

Deaton is with a customer (and patient) when they get to the office, so Stiles and Jake take a seat in the (amazingly uncomfortably) waiting room chairs (wow, why would anyone ever make these), and Stiles puts his head in his hands and tries to breathe because he thought things were going better, he really did, but now this, and he doesn’t know what to do.

Deaton greets them when too-much-hair lady and her demonic parakeet leave, and there’s no recognition in his eyes (nothing, and there’s never been nothing) when he says, “Hello. How can I help you?”

Stiles and Jake stand (or, really, Jake stands and basically lifts Stiles to his feet) and Stiles says, “I, uh, called you. Yesterday. I’m Stiles?” (Which totally isn’t a question, no matter how much it sounds like one.)

Deaton examines him for a second, then shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember a phone call from you.”

Fuck. Okay, that’s going to make things more difficult. “Then let me just tell you—this is probably not a conversation we want to be having in the middle of your reception area.”

His eyebrow goes up. “And why is that?”

“Because it’s going to be mostly about werewolves”—he gestures towards Jake, who gives a jaunty wave (because he’s kind of an asshole, too)—“and you probably don’t want to air that dirty laundry to all your clientele.”

Deaton looks at Jake, who flares his red eyes, and then he turns back to Stiles. “You’re human.”

“Got it in one. Look, you didn’t remember this even though I talked to you yesterday, which is especially worrying because I held a coherent conversation about pack issues like two days ago.” Both of Deaton’s eyebrows go up at this. “Yeah. You knew me _two days ago_. And now you don’t. And I have proof, too. You were the emissary to Talia Hale, Derek’s mom, before she and most of the rest of the pack were killed in a house fire set by Kate Argent. You’re a Druid, and Mrs. Hale asked you to take care of her kids for if she died. Which, you know, not such a great job, dude, because Laura’s dead and fuckall knows where Derek is which is kind of part of the point of why I’m here. There’s a Nemeton that pulls supernatural shit here, and that’s our fault—mine and Scott’s and Allison’s and kind of yours—because you helped us be sacrifices because a Darach wanted to kill our parents. I can keep going all day, if you want me to. So…is there any way to guarantee that you remember this? Because I really don’t feel like doing this every day until we fix whatever the hell is going on.”

There’s a moment, and then Deaton walks over to a desk and pulls out a recorder before swinging open the swingy-thing (Stiles isn’t great with names of things sometimes, so sue him) and breaking the mountain ash line so they can get in. He leads them to the back room where Stiles once almost cut off Derek’s arm, holding out his hand to Jake once they all stop and stand in an awkward triangle (which is what you do when there are three of you). “Alan Deaton.”

Jake takes it and shakes. “Jake Errin.”

“Co-alpha of the Errin pack.” Because even when Deaton doesn’t know what’s going on, he still knows what’s going on. Stiles really should not be surprised. “Very well.” He clicks on the recorder. “This is Alan Deaton, former emissary of the Hale Pack run by Talia Hale, trained by Serrel Arrons, student of Caledonensis” (and holy shit, isn’t that Merlin?) “as witnessed by Alpha Jake Errin.”

He nods to Jake, who says, “So witnessed,” like they’re being all formal and shit. Which apparently they are. Also, apparently Deaton was indirectly trained by Merlin (maybe, or at least Stiles can dream because that’s fucking cool).

A nod towards Stiles, now, who takes that as permission to speak (not that he usually waits for permission, but this is all serious and stuff, so he’s trying to be good). “Okay. Hi. Um. I’m Stiles. Stilinski. Stiles isn’t my actually first name, but that’s—I’m Stiles. Yeah. Anyway. So…Beacon Hills has a pack. A new pack.” And that’s totally not the right place to start. “Okay. A few years ago Laura Hale came back and then was killed and cut in half by Peter Hale, so Derek Hale came back and then Peter bit Scott and Derek killed Peter and became alpha and was a superbly shitty alpha and bit in Isaac and Erica and Boyd, and now Erica and Boyd are dead because the Alpha Pack killed them, and some other stuff happened, and now Scott—who’s a True Alpha—is the alpha and Derek and Liam and Isaac are his betas and Malia is kind of his beta and there’s Kira and Lydia, and now they’re gone and nobody can remember them.”

Deaton and Jake are both blinking at him, which means that what he said was probably not super coherent, but it’s really complicated and hard to explain. And then Deaton sighed. “Please, start from the not remembering.”

Right. Probably a good choice. “So a few days ago I called you and talked to you. You said that there was something on the outskirts of the territory that the pack hadn’t identified yet but not worry about it. Then yesterday I tried to call Scott—the alpha of the pack—and he didn’t pick up, so I called my dad—who knows, by the way—and he didn’t remember Scott being a werewolf, and he doesn’t remember anyone in the pack being part of the pack, and then I called you, and you didn’t remember me. And the thing is that, all of my dad’s memories, they’re kind of close, but they’re wrong, like he thinks Scott and I stopped talking after I left him in the woods, and the thing is that I did leave him in the woods, but then he got bitten by Peter, and that’s when this shit really started happening. For us, at least.”

Deaton stares at him for a moment. “Scott McCall was my assistant, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah. Yes.” They were getting somewhere.

Deaton shakes his head. “It’s odd; I remember him, but only from years ago. Not that I don’t trust you, Mr. Stilinski, but Alpha Errin, what can you confirm?”

Stiles would be offended, but…he isn’t. Not really. Because they’ve all been so much, Deaton probably too even without remembering the shit of the last few years, and Stiles don’t trust anyone outside of the pack. Some days he barely trusts anyone inside the pack other than Scott, because Scott can’t lie to save his life. To save Stiles’s life, maybe, but not his own.

Jake touches a hand to Stiles’s back, rucking up his shirt slightly (to draw off some pain, and thank God, because his ribs are really unhappy with him) and says, “I can confirm the initial part: the formation of the original secondary Hale pack and, to some degree, the transition to it becoming the McCall pack. The details never become well known, but everyone knows the basics. I’ve also met Derek Hale in person and Scott McCall over Skype.”

Right. Stiles has forgotten about that; it felt so long ago, like another world. “So what do you think? Do you know what could do something like that? Mess with memories like that? And scent, too. My room apparently doesn’t smell like werewolves anymore, except probably, you know, Jake. Because he was in my room. Which was obvious. And I’m going to stop talking now.”

Deaton blinks at him. Once. Just once. Because apparently some things don’t change. “At the moment, I don’t know. There are a number of things it could be, but most are unlikely and none make sense. I will contact you tomorrow; if I don’t, contact me.” And then he picks up the recorder and starts speaking in what sounds an awful lot like Latin. And while Stiles’s ability to read Latin has gotten alarmingly good in the past few years, he has no idea how to understand it, so that’s probably their cue to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to end later, but I realized that it would a) be absurdly long and b) not be done on time, so I cut it off here, and you'll have to wait until Monday to see the next part.
> 
> EDIT: Monday will probably not happen (well, Monday will definitely happen, considering that in my time zone it is already Monday, but I will almost definitely not have this posted by the end of Monday unless I decide to hold off on my 10 page paper due Wednesday until Tuesday, which would be a bad idea.) So...Wednesday. Maybe. Hopefully. (Sorry.)


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you may have noticed, the rating has changed. Sorry for doing it so late; I realized that this chapter and forward will occasionally contain sexual fantasies that go beyond teen, so...now it's mature.

Jake waits until Stiles is strapped into the car before asking, “Where to next, Jeeves?”

Stiles snorts. “I think in this case, you’re Jeeves, not me. And Derek’s apartment. I need to see if there’s any fu—if there’s any proof he’s actually a real person and not just someone I made up in some pain-induced delusion.”

Jake puts a hand on his shoulder, and Stiles leans into it because he needs the comfort (and there’s a chat they’re going to need to have, but he can’t have it, not yet). “I met him. I have touched his skin; I can tell you that he is real.”

“Thank you.” Stiles drags a hand against his mouth, pulling away. “It’s—I know what I remember, but what if it’s—what if it’s not what I—”

A hand closes over his mouth, and he bites at the closest available finger because he’s gotten surprisingly used to people trying to get him to shut up that way. But Jake just grins at him and says, deadpan, “Ow.” And then he sighs. “Look, Stiles, you can’t think like that. You can’t second guess every thought and every memory you’ve ever had, because they’re real. All you need to remember is that they’re real and that you’re not alone.”

Stiles shoves at him, which doesn’t do anything, so he grabs the hand and wrenches it enough away from his mouth to ask, “Why are you here? What are you doing here? You’re—this isn’t your pack. They don’t mean anything to you. You don’t even like Derek, we both know that. What are—you know? Never mind.” Stiles doesn’t want to know. Not really. He’ll just take what he can get, because he’s desperate. Because he threw his friends away and now they’re gone, and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do.

But he’s not going to keep panicking about that. Not right now. Not until he knows for sure that he has something to panic about. So he pastes a grin on his face and waves at the street. “Onwards, Jeeves. Chop, chop.”

Jake wants to say something more (Stiles is really damn good at reading that face on people), but instead he just starts driving, and Stiles tries really hard not to think.

Jake hesitates outside of Derek’s apartment door, chewing on the cuticle of his thumb and examining the building like he’s expecting it to jump out and eat him (which doesn’t happen in Beacon Hills. Probably.)

Stiles is impatient, now (not that that’s really new), and he really doesn’t want to wait for Jake to get his shit together. Stiles is supposed to be the one who doesn’t have his shit together; this is a new feeling, with Jake, and he doesn’t like it.

“What’s up with you?”

Jake jerks his head towards Stiles. “What?”

“You look like you’re freaking out. Seriously, what’s wrong? Is there someone here? Are we in danger?”

“What? No. No, I just—it’s another wolf’s territory—a former alpha’s territory—and it feels wrong to intrude without his permission. He’s not going to want me scent here when he gets back.”

When, not if, and Stiles needs to hold on to that. “If it helps to get them back, he’ll deal. And besides, he can go to town pissing all over everything or whatever it is you guys do to mark stuff.”

A smile spreads across Jake’s face. “We’re a bit more civilized than that. It’s more just touching stuff, rubbing against it—and stop making that face at me.” Jake reaches out and grabs his hand. “Come on, let’s find the best way to get in.”

Uh…what? “How about the door?”

Jake glances at him, then at the door, then back at him. “I assume he doesn’t want his door broken.”

“I do have a key.” Stiles unfastens the chain from around his neck, refastening it so nothing falls off as he sticks the rightward key in the lock. The wooden wolf and the key to his house slide down the hang in the air as he unlocks the door then settles the chain around his neck again. “It’s a bit risky, I know, having a chain around my neck, because it can be used to choke me or whatever, but I figured that was less of a concern than losing my key or his or having them stolen.”

“Why do you have a key to his house?”

Stiles frowns at him. “We all do. He even sent one to Isaac in France. It’s a safe place to crash, theoretically, though there is a bit of history of…danger.” Though isn’t that the understatement of the year.

Jake slides a hand up the back of his shirt again, draining off some of the pain, and Stiles braces himself to push the door open. “You seem unnervingly concerned about being in danger.”

“Yeah, well, there is a pretty big history of things going to hell here, so that’s been a concern for us for a while.” He walks into the apartment, flipping the light switch on and lighting up the room. It looks…

“Wow, this looks really generic.” Jake walks past him, hand sliding off his back, to head into the room; he twists by furniture like touching it will burn him. “Can you tell what’s missing?”

Stiles looks around, but it doesn’t look like anything is. “Nothing, as far as I can tell.”

Jake spins to look at him, hand catching on a couch arm, and he jerks away from it. “You mean it always looks like this?”

Stiles shrugs, closing the door behind him because he doesn’t really want people looking in. “Yeah. I mean, Derek isn’t really big on personal touches, so…yeah, this is basically what it looks like.”

“That seems…” Jake’s cuticle goes back into his mouth, and then he’s talking around his thumb which would be more incomprehensible if Stiles didn’t have an unfortunate habit of doing the same thing. “How does he not go crazy? This is—even if I could smell him, which I can’t, and it’s unnerving the hell out of me—it doesn’t feel like a home. Werewolves can’t live like this. We need…home.”

Stiles isn’t surprised, or at least isn’t as surprised as he probably should be. Because Derek never tried to make where he lived into a home, at least not until they pack stabilized, but this…this is a home, at least to them. He made it a home, for them, and maybe he never made it personal because he was afraid that if it was personal someone would try to take it away from him again.

Which made his heart hurt, just a little bit, because he had started, and he had tried so hard to let them in, and now it had been taken away from him, and that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair and Stiles wasn’t going to let that happen. Stiles wasn’t going to let him lose what he had tired for.

“You okay?”

Stiles looks up from his hands (and wow, he needs to cut his nails because those half-moons are probably going to bruise) to see Jake watching him. “Yeah. I just—he’s gone through so much, and—look, I just don’t—we just need to find them. We need to find them. So—what do you smell? Is there—does it smell like them? Does it smell like anything?”

Jake shakes his head, shoving a hand through his hair. “I can faintly smell you and another human and a werewolf, but it’s not Hale.”

“Isaac, then, probably. So…so that means—” That means something, and Stiles knows it’s important, but he can’t figure it out, the dots just not fucking connecting in his brain, and he’s going to need to start writing this shit up again. “We should check to see if any of Derek’s stuff—personal stuff, I mean, not generic apartment stuff—is here.”

Jake nods, stepping away from the couch he’s almost touching. “ _You_ should. And while you’re at it, you should touch anything I’ve touched.”

“Why?” That sounds like a waste of time. “That some weird werewolf mating ritual or something?” And whoops, they weren’t talking about that.

But Jake just sends him a flat look. “It’s to try to mask some of my scent. I’m an alpha. Under other circumstances, being here could be seen as a challenge.”

Oh. “Then why are you—”

“Because you asked. And maybe I’m making dumb decisions for you, but I started down this road, and I’m going to finish it.”

Fuck. That isn’t what Stiles wants, not really, except he needs it, needs Jake’s help, and maybe he’s a bad person, but he would risk Jake in a heartbeat if it meant getting the pack back. Because he likes Jake, but the pack is family. Scott is family.

So Stiles nods and squares his shoulders and walks over to where Jake is standing, trailing his fingers over the part of the couch Jake had touched before heading back into Derek’s bedroom. And he’s only really seen it once before, during the unfortunate shirt incident—and the thought of that still makes his entire body feel hot—but it looks about the same. Mostly neat, clothes away in drawers, with books fucking everywhere (mostly non-fictions and history textbooks, but there are some fiction books too, and the one he gave him is holding the exalted position of actually being on a bookshelf).

It feels weirdly uncomfortably intimate going through Derek’s drawers, and he tries to do it as perfunctorily as possible, just opening each one and checking to see if clothes are actually there. But it’s _Derek_ , and Derek has fascinated him since that day in the woods (and he has no self-control to speak of) so he paws through some of them, trying to see if Derek wears something other than black, gray, and the occasional navy. To which the answer is no, but oh look, lube.

And that’s a thought Stiles doesn’t need to be having. Derek sprawled naked across his bed, limbs loose, one hand still closed around his cock. Or maybe he does it the way he does everything, hard and fast and to punish himself, and then he’s walking away almost before he’s done, licking lube and come from his fingers as he—

Not going there. Not going there. (Not that he hasn’t already gone there more times than he’s willing to admit.) But Jake is in the next room, and Derek is _missing_ , and now is so not the time, no matter what his brain and his dick are telling him.

So he slams that drawer shut and quickly finishes rifling through Derek’s stuff, which tells him basically nothing other than that Derek really fucking likes history, and that he didn’t just pack up and leave. Which he already knew, because Derek wouldn’t do that to them, and because something else would be going on on top of that, and that would be just too damn unlikely.

And he needs to head back now, to go do…something, but he just can’t deal right now with having to put on a brave face and smile far anyone, not even Jake, so he takes a second and just…breathes, and he’s never been more glad to not be a werewolf, because this way he can’t smell the lack of Derek.

\--

“So, Jake, is it? What are you studying?”

Jake gives Stiles’s dad a winning—and appropriately not-obsequious—smile. “I’m majoring in neurobiology.”

“Nothing related to Stiles’s major, then. So how did you meet him?” And oh look, they’re on to the interrogation part of this meal. His dad is home and actually eating the vegetables Stiles made without complaint, and he had been so good with the small talk, but apparently that’s over, and Stiles knows better than to try to stop him.

Jake glances over at Stiles, who gives an I-can’t-help look because, well, he can’t. “My close friend is Stiles’s roommate, so we met through him.”

“So you and your friend go to the same university?”

Jake nods. “Yes, sir. We wanted to stay near home, and it was the closest one we all got into, so we decided to go there. It also has great programs for what all three of us—Sun, Katie, and I—are studying.”

“And you wanted to stay close to home for…?”

“For family.”

His dad’s narrow as he aggressively chews asparagus (and Stiles guesses that’s good, if only because it means he’s eating his vegetables). “You said your parents are dead.”

Wow, that’s super insensitive (though Stiles really wants to hear about this). “ _Dad_.”

Jake looks at him again, something almost like a smile on his face. “It’s okay. Yes, my parents are dead, and I was raised by my sister, who was over eighteen when my father died. And when she went off to college, my extended family raised me.” There’s more to the story, Stiles knows, because Jake had been an alpha at the time, but he couldn’t ask about it now because his dad doesn’t remember (and he had forgotten how much it sucked, keeping secrets from his dad). “And my mom’s been gone for a while, but that’s no great loss.”

Holy shit. Stiles had known there was something there—there’ve been too many comments not to see it—but he couldn’t imagine anyone saying that about their mother. “What?”

Jake grimaces, and wow, Stiles probably needs to learn to be more sensitive, too. But he wants to know, and he’s never been particularly good at resisting poking at things he wants to know. Hence him dragging his asthmatic best friend into the forest at the middle of the night to try to find half a dead body.

“The only thing my mother was worse at than being a good mother was being a good person, so believe me, the loss of her was not great tragedy for anybody.”

That’s unbelievably harsh, especially to say about a parent, but Stiles isn’t going to keep pushing right now, and from the look on his face, neither is his dad. So they just sit there, eating their asparagus—and the rest of the food—and Stiles tries really hard not to look at Jake in case he’s upset, because he knows he doesn’t want anyone looking at him at times like that.

Finally, when the food is almost gone, his dad looks at Jake and says, “I hope the two of you are using condoms,” and Stiles chokes on a piece of asparagus.

Jake, though, takes it in stride. “If we were having sex, we would be.”

His dad stares at Jake for another few seconds, then looks at Stiles, who is still trying not to die from asparagus inhalation. “Just remember that it’s my house, and I expect you to be responsible. And I know that there are a lot of steps between nothing and sex, especially with—”

“Dad. No. Seriously. We’re friends.” Except Jake had said—but they’re friends, and they aren’t having sex, and nothing else is relevant to this conversation. “We’re—I know what condoms need to be used for, and we—let’s stop having this conversation. Please. Now.”

“Okay.” His dad smiles, and it’s a smile that makes Stiles think he might get out a shotgun and start cleaning it next.

Stiles manages to refrain from braining himself on the table in front of him, but only because his plate is in the way.

\--

They spend their time after dinner working on classwork, because Stiles, at least, can’t afford to fall behind, especially when he’s already missed so much class, and it’s like back at school, sitting across from each other in Stiles’s bed, each with a laptop or a textbook, just reading on their own.

Except Jake keeps _looking_ at him.

Finally, Stiles has enough, and he shuts his laptop (and okay, he wasn’t doing that much work, because Wikipedia-hopping around articles about mythology about succubi is interesting, and his Adderall is wearing off) and says, “We need to talk.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is almost on time (if you pretend Monday isn't a day). But now my class is over and my job is over for the next few weeks, so I should be able to keep more on schedule. That being said, the next chapter may or may not be up by Monday because my parents aren't going home until Sunday, but I'll do my best.


	17. Chapter 17

Jake looks at him for a minute, then scrubs a hand across his forehead, closing his textbook. “Yeah, we should probably—do that later because my phone is ringing. Fuck.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket (and Stiles might even have thought he was lying, but it’s vibrating in his hand) and looks at the caller ID. “Okay, this is Sun. I have to take this.”

“Yeah.” Stiles understands. Pack comes first, and he wouldn’t ask for Jake to do it any differently. Something could be wrong, something could be after them, and shit, he didn’t think about what taking the alpha away from that little tiny piece of the pack would do. He put them in danger, too, and that was never what he intended to do. “I need to call Lydia, anyway.”

He climbs off his bed (and holy shit, ow, he’s stiff) and pulls his phone out, and thank god this is a phone he can dial with one hand because his left hand is being weird as hell and is partially taped to itself; he heads out of the room, because it must be irritating to be a werewolf and have to deal with two conversations going on at the same time.

Lydia picks up after two rings. “Took you fucking long enough.”

Right. “Sorry. I was—it’s been a long couple of days. We’re—I talked to Deaton and we stopped at Derek’s apartment, and the whole thing is a clusterfuck.”

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t _know_. Deaton didn’t remember me and didn’t even remember that I had talked to him the yesterday. And apparently nothing smells like Derek or Scott or any of them.” He scrubs his left hand against his chest, which is way too awkward with the goddamn finger brace thingy, because his chest feels like it’s going to pound its way through his chest.

“Are you safe, Stiles? That’s what matters.”

Stiles snorts. “I have no idea. You have no idea how little idea I have about what’s going on, and anyway, that’s not what matters. What matters is getting the pack back.”

“Stiles.” She clicks her tongue at him. “I’m serious; you’re not going to throw yourself away for this. It’s not like your life is worth less than—”

“Can we not?” He doesn’t want to listen to some BS about how he’s important too, blah blah blah. He matters because they need him, because his friends need him; otherwise, he’s mostly just a fuck-up who drags people into bad situations.

“Fine. If you need help, you are going to call me. And this isn’t a request, it’s an order. You will call me if you need help. And you will _be careful_.”

“Yeah.” As careful as anyone ever can be in Beacon Hills. “And, uh, I know you were worried about Parrish, but my dad said he’s at some counterterrorism thing where he’s not allowed to have phones, which matches up with what he said before he lost his memories, so it should be right. I mean, I don’t know why he wouldn’t be affected by whatever it is, but I also don’t know why he would, so…yeah. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Thank you. Now give me the number of your new boyfriend. I want to check with him to see how he’s doing.”

“He’s not my boyfriend, and no.” That’s not a dialogue Stiles wants to encourage.

“You know I’ll find it anyway.”

“Then find it, but I’m not giving it to you.” Jake pulls the door open just enough for Stiles to see that he’s not on the phone anymore, and he nods. “I have to go. I’ll let you know when we figure whatever the hell is going on out.”

“Or if you need help.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Bye.” And then he hangs up before Lydia can keep telling him to not be stupid. Being stupid is his superpower. “Can we talk now?”

Jake peeks his head out again. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. You’re welcome to come back in.”

“It’s my bedroom, but thanks.” Stiles pushes his way back into the room, shutting the door behind him because this is not a conversation he needs his father overhearing. “So…what you said a few days ago. About me being your mate.”

Jake stares at him for a minute, and then starts _laughing_ (the asshole) like this is something funny, when Stiles has been seriously freaking out about this for like two days, and he so doesn’t need something else to freak out about. “All of the things going on right now, and that’s what you go with for us to talk about?”

Stiles throws his hands up, because screw him. “This is the one thing that I can get information on, so yeah, it’s what I’m going with.” He walks over and flops down on his bed, which is a really fucking bad idea, because now his ribs are screaming at him and he’s gasping for breath, and Jake is reaching for him but he shakes his head. “We’re not going to be able to hold a coherent conversation with you doing that,” and he has to gasp in a few more breaths, “so just…sit on your side of the bed. Please. Thanks.”

Jake sits down, and Stiles levers himself up to sitting in the least painful way he can come up with at the moment. And then he just…sit there, staring at Stiles, which is super unhelpful.

“Okay, dude, now it’s your turn to say something.”

“I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

And really? _Really_? He’s going with being dense now? “Explain what you meant by that. Please. Like, is there some sort of weird werewolf soulmate thing? If we had sex would you knot me and then I would get pregnant? Is it like with real wolves where there’s an alpha pair and a beta pairs and…I don’t know. I’m just making shit up at this point.”

Jake smirks at him. “No to all of those, unless you actually have a uterus and eggs, in which case I guess maybe you could get pregnant, but otherwise, no. It’s—werewolves are…on the level of monogamy, werewolves rank higher than humans. Like, we pick someone, and then that’s it, unless something really fucking major happens. That’s not to say that werewolves don’t screw around with people, but once they pick someone, they pick them.”

“But you can have more than one, right? Like if something really big happens to one of them”—like they die—“you can end up with another one, right? You’re not going to be alone forever?”

Jake gives him a weird look, then after a few seconds nods. “Yeah, if there’s another time and sufficient reason, you can shift away and towards another person, though in most cases, the original feeling won’t go away entirely.”

And that said some frightening things about Derek’s relationship with Kate post-fire. But Stiles really didn’t want to think about that. Ever. “Wait, so I’m…that? To you? I mean, did you…pick me, or is this just something that happens, or is it some kind of scent thing, and why has nobody mentioned this before?”

“It’s not something we usually talk about, and bitten werewolves may know about it instinctually but not consciously. And it’s a semi-conscious decision. I’m attracted to you and really like you, so it happened, but if I had been attracted without any liking involved, it probably wouldn’t have happened. And it’s not just about attraction. Sometimes it’s not at all, from what I’ve heard. But it’s about—it’s about wanting to keep you safe and happy and wanting to be near you and touch you and be with you, and if we never had sex I could deal with it—I wouldn’t be happy, but I could deal with it—and mostly I just want you to be warm and safe and happy and fed and sheltered and—” He breaks off, face a dull red. “And yeah. That’s about it. I know it probably sounds weird to a human, but…we have instincts, things that—things that show up, and we can fight them, I can fight them, but…wolves make dens, you know. And werewolves want to stick their mates in dens.”

Holy shit. That’s…not what Stiles was expecting to hear. He’d been joking about the soulmate thing, had expected Jake to just say that it was some weird werewolf term for boyfriend or something, but…wow. That’s like a legit thing. With feelings. Feelings that Stiles doesn’t know if he has.

“I’m not sure if I can—” And how can he say this without hurting Jake? Which is something he really doesn’t want to do, because he does like Jake. A lot. Just not…denning, a lot. Probably. “There’s a ton of shit going on right now, and I don’t have—I can’t—when Scott got a girlfriend everything went to hell.” Which is not really what he had been trying to say, but it’s true, though at least some of that was because Allison’s dad was trying to shoot Scott, which kind of put a cramp in their style.

Jake nods like he knows what Stiles is trying to say. “I understand, and I didn’t tell you to put pressure on you to do something. And on that note, I realized that I have something to apologize to you for, and this is probably a good time to do that.”

Stiles can’t think of anything, not really, except for maybe not telling him about being an alpha and then putting him in the awkward position of finding out at a party being held by his pack. “Okay?”

“Before Christmas break, I kissed you”—oh yeah, fuck—“and I not only didn’t get your permission, which was bad and sexual-assault-y of me, but I also outed you without your permission, which was super shitty of me, so I’m really sorry. For both of those things. And really for manhandling you in general without your permission. I—things are simpler, or at least different, within the pack, and I was so wrapped up in thinking of you that way that I didn’t stop to think of the consequences of my actions. Which isn’t an excuse, but…yeah. I’m sorry.”

Oh. “It’s…I mean, I don’t want to say that you kissing me without my permission is okay, but I didn’t really mind you kissing me then, and about being out, yeah, that was kind of bad, but I’m comfortable enough with who I am and we go to a liberal enough school that it’s not really any harm done. But as something to think about for the future, you might want to try not to out people without their permission. Because that’s bad. And dangerous. And stuff. Which you probably know, being gay or bi or pan or…I mean, I guess you could be asexual, asexuals like to kiss, maybe, I think, or at least some of them do, you haven’t really specified and I don’t want to assume.”

“I’m gay.”

“Okay.” And now there’s silence, and it’s awkward, and Stiles isn’t good with silence. At all. As literally anybody who knows him can attest to. “So…yeah, about the mates thing, I’m going to drop it, but I just want to—if you still feel the same way after all this shit is over, maybe I’ll—I’m not going to make any promises, but I do like you, and I might be willing to give it a try if you still want to. And maybe I won’t, but I’m just…not saying no right now. Which might not be fair to you, because I can’t give you an answer, and I’m not expecting you to wait for me or anything, so if you tell me you’ve found someone else I’m not going to—anyway. Yeah. If that’s okay with you.”

“That’s okay.” Jake beams at him, and wow, Stiles hadn’t thought a very-not-accept (acceptance? Accepting?) would garner such a positive reaction, but okay. Werewolves. Who could understand them? “And if you decide otherwise—it’s platonic, too, or it can be, and I’d be okay just being your friend, because friends are important, and I wouldn’t try to make you feel bad about saying no, and I’d just want you to let me take care of you. Like an alpha, and a friend, and pack.”

That seems like way more than Stiles could ever ask for, and also a trick, but he can’t figure out what the trick would be, and he really doesn’t have the energy to question it right now. “‘Kay.”

Jake stares at him again, and it’s a different kind of staring now, less awkward and more desire. “I know that you just said that we’re not going to be anything, so you don’t have to say yes, and I totally understand if you don’t, but…can I kiss you now? Just once, with your permission. I—we might not have this again, and I want it just once before you say no, if you say no, and—” Jake gives him a sheepish smile. “We’re going to just agree on the conclusion that I’m not very good at this. Like, bravado and flirting and being an alpha, I can do, but genuine conversations about feelings and stuff turn me into…you—”

“ _Hey_.”

“—so we can pretend I didn’t just flail my way through that proposal.”

Stiles sticks his tongue out him, because he so deserves it, but the idea of kissing him really is appealing. Stiles has only had a few kisses since the end of his whatever with Malia, and he really does miss it, and he really does enjoy kissing. “Okay.”

“Okay as in we’re going to pretend I didn’t ask that, or—”

“Okay as in you can kiss me. Or we can kiss each other. Whatever.”

Jake fucking _glows_ at that, and then he starts looking around the room like he’s trying to find things to work with or something, which is an appealing idea, but also so not what they’re doing at the moment. “Do you mind if I move you a bit? I don’t want to hurt your ribs.”

“Where do you want me?”

Stiles means that as ‘I’ll move,’ but Jake apparently takes that to mean ‘go right ahead, pick me up like I’m a child’ and lifts Stiles and lays him on the bed so he’s flat on his back, Jake’s head hovering over him for a second before he starts moving stuff off the bed, presumably so it doesn’t fall. Which indicates a level of acrobatics Stiles hadn’t really been counting on, but okay, he’ll see where this goes.

“I’ll just…stay here.”

“You do that.” And it sounds like Jake is laughing at him, the asshole. So Stiles gets himself nice and comfortable, propping his head up on his hands (which is only mildly awkward because of his broken finger) and staring at up at the ceiling. Which is very nice ceiling, mostly because from this angle he can’t see the weird stain from that really unfortunate experiment by him and Scott years ago.

And then Jake is above him, face eclipsing everything, so close that Stiles can feel his breath against his lips, and he’s smiling like Stiles just told him he won the fucking lottery. “You can tell me to stop any time you want.”

“I am not trying to lift my body to get up to you, so—” _kiss me already_ , except Jake is already doing that, mouth on his, teeth scraping his lower lip and drawing a low moan from Stiles that would be embarrassing at any other time, and he tries to move his hands to _touch_ , to do _something_ , but Jake pins them down with one hand, leaning more of his weight over Stiles, and wow, he is surprisingly okay with that.

Jake sucks _hard_ on his lower lip, and then his mouth is gone _and that’s an embarrassing whimper_ as he arches up to try to find it again, because his eyes are closed (and when did that happen), but then there are teeth on his neck and a hand on his ribs, and the pain is being drained from his ribs so all he can feel are the blunt teeth and wet tongue against the column of his throat, and he can hear himself panting and through it he manages, “No hickeys,” because that is not something he wants to explain to his dad, no siree, not at all, and Jake laughs, the feeling vibrating against his skin.

“Don’t worry,” and he nips, but not hard enough to leave a mark (hopefully), “I have more control than that,” and maybe Stiles doesn’t, because his legs are tangling with Jake’s, and that brings their hips together in interesting—

And then there’s a hand burning against his hipbone, moving down, and Stiles rips himself away from the sensation enough to say, “No. Stop.” Because they are not going there, not right now. Maybe not ever.

Jake jerks off of him, rolling onto his back next to Stiles, and they both lay there for a minute, breathing hard, and Stiles is at least half hard. And then Jake turns his head to look at look at Stiles, and he’s smiling. “We should probably work on our homework.”

Stiles sinks back into the mattress with a moan, because even though that’s the responsibly thing to do, it’s really not what he wants to do at the moment. Though what he does want to do is not such a good idea. “Yeah, probably.”

They lay there for a moment, just…there, and then Jake starts laughing, and so does Stiles, and even though it hurts his side like a motherfucker, it feels better than he’s felt in days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was a conversation that needed to happen, and it ended up being way longer than expected, so it turned into a whole chapter. Back to plot-y things next chapter. Also possibly some Sterek-y things either next chapter or the chapter after (and you can see how well I have all of this planned out).
> 
> Also, as you may have noticed, Mondays and Fridays aren't working, so the new plan is Tuesday/Friday, which should hopefully be more sustainable, especially once school starts and I have class until 8 on Mondays.


	18. Chapter 18

Stiles passes out after doing his homework (minus reading some shitty book for his requisite lit requirement), which includes looking at the database of all of the terrorist attacks in the last 45 years, of which there are…a lot, holy shit, and when he wakes up he’s alone, his nose is bleeding, and he has no idea where he is.

Well, okay, the last isn’t really true. He knows where he is. He just doesn’t know why he’s there instead of, well, where he should be.

“Dad?”

There’s nothing, and he rolls to an approximately sitting position, which takes his breath away with the amount of pain it’s shooting through his ribs, and one of his fingers is broken, and fuck what’s going on? And blood is dripping onto his hand, and there’s definitely some of that on his pillow, and he’s going to need to get it out, which he’s gotten remarkably good at since the whole Scott-becoming-a-werewolf thing, which is kind of sad, and seriously, what the fuck is going on?

And then the door opens, and it’s _Jake_ , which makes no fucking sense, and Stiles just kind of blinks at him because this is really fucking confusing.

“What are you doing here?”

Jake walks towards him slowly, like he thinks Stiles is going to run away or break or something, and Stiles wipes a hand across his face to try to get some of the sleep-grossness off of it, which totally backfires because now he has blood all over his face. “Stiles? What’s going on?”

“What are you doing in my house?” He looks around, which tells him exactly nothing. “What am _I_ doing in my house?”

Jake stares at him for a long, long time, and then he sort of crumples, then straightens out, which is a very weird sequence of events and really isn’t helping clarify anything for Stiles. “What do you remember?”

What the hell is that supposed to mean? “What do you mean, what do I remember?”

Jake grabs an entire box of tissues and shoves them at Stiles, then keeps standing next to the bed, staring at him. “I mean, do you remember Scott?”

“Of course I remember Scott. He’s my best friend, and—” Fuck. “And he’s missing. Fuck. _Fuck._ ” Stiles had _forgotten_. How the hell had he forgotten? How do you forget that you best friend, and basically like 90% of your friends, are missing? “Why am I forgetting?”

“I don’t know.”

“We need to see Deaton. Now. I need to know what he knows.” Stiles scrambles out of bed, clutching a few tissues to his nose because he doesn’t really want to get blood everywhere, and Jake catches his shoulders when he inevitably catches his foot on his sheet and sends himself pitching towards the floor. “Let’s go.”

Jake stabilizes him, then grabs another couple of tissues, which he holds out to him. “First, we need food, and you need to stop bleeding, and I’m guessing you need to take your Adderall.”

Stiles grimaces at him even though he’s probably right, damn it. “Are you going to try to nurture me all the time now, or something? Because I’ve got to tell you, that’s going to get old, fast.”

Jake rolls his eyes at him so hard it looks like he’s going to lose his irises inside his head (and isn’t that a gross thought, wow, Stiles is glad he had that thought). “Fine, then, you smell like blood and fear and anxiety, and I really don’t want to deal with you when on Adderall withdrawal.”

“Fair enough. I’m going to go shower. There’s food downstairs that you can grab, though I have no idea if my dad’s home.”

“He isn’t.”

Oh yeah. Werewolf. “Okay, my dad isn’t home, so you don’t need to worry about running into him.” And Stiles really needs Jake to just…be out of the room for a few minutes so Stiles can break down in private. Because he’s forgetting (already forgetting, is it already or is it something else, is it because he’s back or because he was pack or because he isn’t pack anymore or is there some other reason, and he’s going to need to start writing this stuff down once they talk to Deaton, or maybe before they talk to Deaton) and he pulls out his clear evidence board and his white pencil that he used a few times too many (because there are always bodies in Beacon Hills) and starts writing up what’s going on.

He makes three columns (forgotten, forgetting, remembering) and starts putting people under the lists (Scott, Derek, Liam, Malia, Kira; Dad, Deaton, Stiles(?); Lydia, Isaac, Jackson, Jake, Stiles(?)) but then he needs more, too, because there are some smells that are gone and some that aren’t, so below he makes a second set (scent gone, scent there) and adds names under those (Scott, Derek, Liam, Malia, Kira; Stiles, Lydia, Isaac) and his vision is blurred and his cheeks are wet and he’s crying because writing this down makes it _real_ , but there’s something there, too, something—

“Shit.” Stiles draws a line to the right of the two sets of lists and starts another set (in Beacon Hills, not in Beacon Hills) and fills in names to that, too (Scott, Derek, Liam, Malia, Kira, Dad, Deaton, Stiles, Jake; Lydia, Isaac, Jackson) and then he has to add to the latter one (Stiles, Jake) because they were away, too, and holy shit, this is it.

“I thought you were going to shower.”

Stiles spins around to look at Jake, then jabs the pencil in the direction of the board. “I got it.”

Jake’s eyebrows go up. “You know what’s doing this?”

“No, but…I know why I’m forgetting. Kind of.” Except he doesn’t know why Jake isn’t forgetting. But he can’t worry about that. “Look.”

Jake looks at the board, then back at Stiles, and there’s no recognition on his face that would say that he actually gets what Stiles is saying. “I looked.”

“No, you—the people who are forgetting are the people in Beacon Hills, and it’s the same with the people who disappeared. The people in the pack who disappeared, who everyone forgot about, they were the ones in Beacon Hills when whatever happened happened, and it’s their scents that are gone, and the rest of the people in Beacon Hills, or at least the people that I talked to, they’re the one who forgot, and the people who didn’t disappear and didn’t forget are the people who aren’t in Beacon Hills. Except I’m in Beacon Hills, now, and I think that’s why I’m forgetting.”

Which solves exactly zero problems, now that he actually thinks about it, because he’s still forgetting, or he has forgotten, or something, and fuck.

Suddenly Jake is in front of him, pushing his shoulder down so he sinks down onto the bed, his head going between his knees as everything goes weird and flarey and gray. “Breathe, Stiles. In, two, three, four, five. Out, two, three, four, five. In, two, three, four, five.” And he keeps talking, murmuring numbers and other things that Stiles half-listens to through the rushing in his ears, and goddamn it he wishes this would stop happening because it’s starting to get really fucking annoying.

And Jake’s hand feels good, until it doesn’t, and then it’s like the weight of the entire world, pushing him down, crushing him, and he jerks away, curling in on himself and trying to just not touch anything, which doesn’t work so well, because things are _there_ , and maybe if he started levitating it would all work out, but he never figured out how to do that, and he’s not going to be able to, not with Scott and Derek and everyone gone and with him forgetting, and what is he supposed to do then, what’s supposed to happen, _fuck_.

And then, finally, he can breathe again, and there’s clammy cold fear-sweat all over him and he must smell awful, and he pulls away from Jake and clamors off his bed to an approximately standing position. “Now I’m actually going to go shower.”

Jake raises an eyebrow at him. “Sure you don’t need help?”

Laughing, Stiles shoves him away. “Screw you.”

“I’d be happy to help.”

“I’m sure you would, but this body is off-limits to your showering wiles.” Stiles gestures down at his body, and oh hey, he doesn’t actually have pants no, just boxers. That’s awkward. “Also I have snot on my face, and that’s really gross, and I should get that off before it dries because dried snot is even worse than wet snot, and did you know that phlem was one of the humors, and it was associated with apathetic behavior, and who looks at someone with phlem all over their face and thinks ‘that person is apathetic’? Like, that makes no sense. At all. And I’m going to stop talking now and go shower.”

“And then you should probably take your Adderall.”

“Right you are, bucko,” and oh God, that just came out of his mouth. And now he’s going to go shower. Right now. This very minute. Post haste. Before he can start spouting off anything else that’s totally ridiculous, or thinking about the things he shouldn’t be thinking about, or—

Showering. Showers. Wet things falling on him. Water. Yes. Now.

So very much now.

\--

They make it to Deaton’s an hour later, and Stiles is super glad that Jake is the one driving because every few minutes he remembers that he’s forgetting, and that’s the worst fucking feeling in the world, and then he has a mini panic and has to calm himself down. Which would not be very conducive to driving.

Deaton doesn’t have any clients when they get there, and he lets them in and immediately turns on the recorder, which could either be a good thing or a really bad thing.

“Should I assume you are here because there has been some sort of breakthrough, as I haven’t contacted you yet?”

“Breakthrough probably isn’t the right word, but…yeah.” Stiles sinks into a nearby chair, which lasts all of about three seconds before he’s up and pacing, because sitting still is not going well for him at the moment. “So, uh, first, I figured something out.” Except that’s not really first. “Well, actually, first, we have a problem.” And fuck, he doesn’t want to say the words aloud, not to this Deaton who isn’t really Deaton because he doesn’t remember the Nemeton and doesn’t remember crazy-ass Peter or crazy-ass zombie Peter and doesn’t remember Derek being alpha. “So…which do you want to hear first?”

Deaton blinks at him as he paces back and forth near the metal table where he almost cut Derek’s arm off, and wow, that’s not a thought he wants to have either. “What you figured out, I supped.”

“Okay. Cool. Great. I can do that.” He shoves a hand through his hair and keeps moving because if he keeps still he’s going to have to think, and thinking is not on the agenda at the moment. “Right. So…the people who were forgotten—actually, that makes no sense. But the people my dad forgot, they’re the ones who were in town—in Beacon Hills—when the…forgetting happened. And they’re the ones whose smells are gone, because oh yeah, smells are gone, that’s a thing. And the people who are forgetting are the people in Beacon Hills. But I don’t know why you forget me, because I wasn’t in Beacon Hills at the time, and also, are you still forgetting?”

Deaton blinks at him again, but he seems to have followed everything Stiles just rambled at him, because he nods. “I am. That is interesting. Do you know if it is contained to the city boundaries?”

“I mean, I don’t. None of us have been able to get ahold of Parrish, who’s in Seattle, and I don’t really know what he counts as, and everyone else who could be remotely pack is out of state or out of the country. I was the only person in California.”

“And what is your relation to the pack?”

That leads to a quick glance at Jake, who is leaning back against a wall, arms crossed as he stares at him, and fuck, that’s going to be complicated. “So I joined Jake’s pack without totally knowing what that meant, and so I don’t know if I count as part of Scott’s pack, but I don’t know if he knows that, so I think in his mind, I’m pack. Which is probably what counts, because he’s, you know, the alpha.”

“And you are simply human?”

“I don’t know if I would call myself _simply_ human, but yeah.”

Deaton’s eyes narrow. “And those who are out of the state? Are they all werewolves?”

“No, uh, Jackson’s a werewolf who used to be a kanima, and I really don’t know if he counts as pack, but I don’t think so, but either way, he remembers. And Lydia’s a banshee, but she’s definitely pack. And then there’s Isaac, who’s also definitely pack, and a werewolf.”

“Have you spoken to this Isaac? Do you know how he reacted?”

Reacted? “To hearing that the pack was missing? He was freaked out, I guess, but—” But there was more, and he had been on pain meds at the time, so the conversation was honestly a little bit blurry, but he has to _remember_. “He had a headache. I mean, it was like three in the morning there, so it might have been because of that, but…but his head hurt.”

“Hmm.” Deaton looks at the recorder, and it could be a nervous tic, or it could be something more, and Stiles can’t fucking tell because it’s _Deaton_ , who officially wins the award for ‘most cryptic veterinarian in existence’ all the fucking time. “And the problem?”

Right. “I’m forgetting, too.”

Deaton goes actually still at this, and it’s not like he was moving much before, but now he’s _still_ , and it’s disconcerting as hell. “Can you elaborate?”

“I woke up this morning and didn’t remember why I was in my house or why Jake was here or that Scott and everyone else are missing. And—” The words catch in his throat, and Jake pushes off and walks over to him, closing a hand over the nape of his neck, which lasts about as long as sitting in the chair did, and then he needs to move again, stepping from tile to tile in the same path over and over, seven steps, pivot, and Jake moves out of his way, and seven steps, pivot, seven, pivot, seven, pivot, seven, pivot, and then it’s eight, and fuck he’s going to start crying again, and things haven’t freaked him out this badly since _he couldn’t read_ , and he just has to breathe before he makes himself pass out. “And when I stop thinking about it, I can’t remember. Like I know that I’m forgetting, but sometimes if I stop _thinking_ about it, I can’t remember what I’m forgetting, and—” He sucks in a deep breath, then lets it out slowly, calming his jitters before he actually has a heart attack. “And yeah. So that’s a problem.”

“And this began this morning?”

Thank God for Deaton’s calm voice. The world could be on fire—Deaton could be on fire—and he would probably still sound like that. “Yeah. I—I think so. Or, I mean, there was a second yesterday, but—but I think it started this morning.”

“So since you came to Beacon Hills.”

“Yeah.”

Deaton looks at Jake, or at least it sounds like his does, because the direction his voice is coming from changes slightly. “And you, Alpha Errin?”

“I haven’t forgotten anything. Though I only met Hale briefly, and Alpha McCall only over video chat.”

Right. It was weird to think that Jake doesn’t actually _know_ Scott or Derek or any of them, because _everyone_ knows (knew) them, but that was only in their small town, and only in their small school, and sometimes Stiles forgets that.

“So you have no connection to them?”

“Not except through Stiles.”

Deaton makes a hmm-ing noise. “Very well.”

Stiles turns on him. “Do you know what it is? Do you know what’s doing it? Is it an alpha or a—wait, fuck, is there another Darach? Because I do not want to deal with another fucking Darach.”

“I must say, given what you know you, you must have had quite the adventure.”

Stiles’s temper spikes. “What you _must say_ is what the hell this is. None of this cryptic mumbo-jumbo bullshit. I want to know what took my friends away from me, and how to get them back.”

Deaton gives him a look of almost-sympathy. “I would tell you if I knew, but at the moment, I still only have theories that make no sense because most of them are impossible. I can tell you this: it is neither a werewolf nor a druid in any form. Darachs act on sacrifices that have not occurred—which I know because your werewolf friend who is in the pack but outside of Beacon Hills would know. In the worst case, he would _be_ the alpha, and believe me, that is something he would have noticed. And Druids acting without sacrifice would not have the power requirement to do something to this degree. The problem is that that leaves basically no creature that both has the capabilities and meets the power requirements to accomplish this.”

“Can’t—Lydia said that alphas can steal memories.”

“Only at a discrete and individual level, both in terms of people and memories. This is different. This is an en masse destruction and alteration of all memories related to memories of your pack who were in Beacon Hills at the time. And it’s continuous—I continue to forget, and you are beginning to. I will present you with all possible options in three hours.”

Three hours? What the hell was he supposed to do for three hours “And until then? Am I supposed to just stand around twiddling my thumbs? My friends are _gone_ , and if I don’t do anything, I’m going forget about them. I might forget about them in three hours.”

“What I need you to do is call your friends—all of those connected to the pack who are outside of Beacon Hills—and find out if they are forgetting. This is important; it will change the answer I have for you.”

“And you?” Stiles waves a hand at him. “You’re forgetting. What if you forget, too? What if it all just drops out of your head like it’s dropping out of mine, and then you don’t give me an answer, and then I forget and Jake forgets, and then they’re just—they’re just gone?”

“I will not forget.”

“How can you guarantee that? You can’t remember to remember something, that’s not how it works.”

Deaton holds up a hand, and it’s _dripping blood_ (holy fuck), and then, in that same deep calm voice, he repeats, “I will not forget.” And what the fuck is that supposed to mean? But Stiles know he won’t answer (he never answers), and he doesn’t want to keep asking, so he just nods. Because he believes him. God help him, but he believes him. “Now please, Mr. Stilinski, Alpha Errin, let me do my job. I will contact you in three hours. If I do not, contact me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a terrible chapter. But next chapter we start getting angst, so hooray!


	19. Chapter 19

Three hours and ten minutes later, there has been no word from Deaton. Which Stiles only knows because there’s a timer on his phone that went off at three hours and has been going off every five minutes since. He has post-it notes all around him with names (Scott, Derek, Liam, Kira, Malia) and words (missing, missing, missing, missing, missing, because maybe if he writes it enough times he’ll remember it), and it keeps slipping.

“Tell me again.” Stiles looks at Jake (Jake, friend from college, alpha, here to help, here to help), then at the writing on his arm, which Jake covers. “Tell me what you remember.”

“Isaac still remembers. Lydia still remembers. She called Jackson, who also still remembers. We still can’t get in touch with Parrish, who’s in Seattle.”

“And?”

Fuck, he forgot something? “And—animal, vegetable, mineral?”

Jake blinks at him. “What?”

“Is it something about Isaac, Lydia, Jackson, or Parrish? Which I guess is more like animal, vegetable, mineral, alien.”

Recognition crosses Jake’s face, which doesn’t do a damn thing for him. “You tell me.”

Damn it. “Uh—it wouldn’t be Jackson, because I didn’t talk to him, and because he’s barely pack. Not Parrish, because we haven’t had any contact with him. So…Isaac or Lydia? Isaac or Lydia?” Something sparks. “Lydia. Lydia is going to call and remind me every morning, just in case you start forgetting. Yes? Right?”

Jake nods, relief crossing his face. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Jesus Christ, I hate this. Okay. And why are you doing this again?”

“Because you’re my pack, and—” He swallows something down, and he was going to say the word mate (Stiles knows, he remembers that conversation, he just doesn’t understand this, because nobody is this nice). “Because I want to help you. Why is this so hard to understand?”

“Because people don’t _help_ me with things, not without a good reason. How do I know you’re not going to rip my throat out?” Which is actually a very good question, one he probably should have asked earlier. “Why aren’t you ripping my throat out? Like, actually?”

Jake looks absolutely fucking horrified, which would be more reassuring if Stiles hadn’t met such good liars. And also, Stiles should probably start keeping wolfsbane on him again, or at least mountain ash, because things have started going to hell again, and he needs to be ready. He should be more ready. “Why would I do that? Why would you _think_ I would do that?”

“Because Scott trusts people too much, so I need to be the person who doesn’t trust people. That’s my job. It’s one of the other things I’m good at. Not trusting people. So I probably shouldn’t trust you. I probably wouldn’t have trusted you, except I thought you were human, so I started trusting you, and that was probably a bad idea, and I’m not saying that this is your fault, because it’s not, but it could have been, and wow, I got really lucky that you didn’t kill me.”

“I’m not going to—”

The alarm goes off again, and Stiles grabs at it, because this is probably not a conversation he should be having, because provoking werewolves is a bad idea (not that he doesn’t do it anyway), and it’s like he’s lost his mind and his instincts are going haywire (and once all of this shit is done, if he’s still alive, he’s getting therapy. Or getting a therapist. Or finding out if there is a supernatural therapist, because he’s pretty sure he has PTSD, and it’s actually starting to interfere with what he can do, and once it starts putting his friends at risk, he needs to get it fixed).

“I’m calling Deaton. Now.”

Deaton picks up on the first ring, which is good, because Stiles is about fifteen seconds from a panic attack. “Beacon Hills Animal Clinic.”

“It’s Stiles. Do you have an answer for me?”

There’s a pause (breathe, breathe, in, out, in, out), and then, “Apologies, Mr. Stilinski. I forgot the time. If you will join me at the clinic, I have some information for you.”

So they’re back to the clinic again, and it feels like they’re spending all of their time there instead of doing something ( _anything_ ) useful. But maybe this time they’ll get something. Maybe after this they’ll be able to go out and find the son of a bitch (or daughter of a bitch, evil is equal-opportunity) who did this so they can save his friends.

The gate is open , and so they both walk in and to the back, where Deaton is waiting with a big-ass book open on the scary metal table that they tend to use for bleeding werewolves (and hurt puppies). And there’s a small puddle of blood next to the table (and that’s not making things any less creepy, and breathe, this is Deaton, they’re looking for Scott and Derek and Liam and Kira and Malia, breathe).

“What do you have?”

Deaton looks at him. “First, I believe you have something for me.”

“Yeah. Right.” He has something. He called someone. He—

“It’s on your arm.”

He wrote it on his arm. Right. He shoves his sleeves up, and look, there’s a bunch of stuff written on his arm in sharpie. “Lydia and Isaac and Jackson all remember, and we still haven’t gotten in touch with Parrish.”

Deaton nods. “I was afraid of that.”

“Isn’t that a good thing? That they can remember, I mean? For in case we forget?”

“In that regard, it is, but for what it suggests, no. What do you know about nuclear fission?”

Oh God. “Are you telling me it’s some sort of fission monster? Are we facing a fission monster? Because I am not prepared for a fission monster.”

“It is not a fission monster. Now what do you know about nuclear fission?”

Jake holds his hand up, and Stiles starts, because he actually kind of forgot Jake was there. Not the new kind of forgetting, but regular not-paying-attention forgetting. “I think I can take this. Nuclear fission is basically where a big atom splits into two atoms, and that split releases energy. I can get more into the physics of it, but—”

“That is sufficient, thank you. What is going on is similar to that.”

“So you know what it is? You know what’s doing this?”

“Yes.” Deaton gestures towards the book, and Stiles hurries over, which does absolutely nothing, because it’s in what looks like Norwegian, and his Norwegian is…nonexistent. “If I am correct, it is a mage.”

A…mage? Stiles looks at Jake, who looks just as confused as Stiles feels, so that’s not super helpful. “Is a mage like a druid? Because I know basically nothing about druids, but I know more about them than mages, which I’ve literally never heard of before.”

Deaton shakes his head. “Unfortunately not. The reason I hadn’t brought this up before is that I had thought it was impossible. As far as I know, there haven’t been mages in the United States. Ever. But this is Beacon Hills, and that’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“And what does this have to do with nuclear fission?”

“Mages get their power by taking territory.”

“Like a werewolf?”

Deaton shakes his head, and there’s blood dripping on the floor, and the sound is distracting as fuck, and Stiles really wants to know about it but not now. “Werewolves hold territories. Mages take them. Their power comes from separating a territory from a pack. And this territory—the territory with a Nemeton being held by a True Alpha—is one of the most powerful in the country, if not the world. Tearing this—this Scott away from the Nemeton territory would be the energy equivalent of a fission bomb, all feeding this mage.”

“And then what?”

“The alpha will likely not survive the taking of the territory, and any of his bitten betas will almost definitely die as well. Derek Hale—being born and not an alpha—may survive, but it’s unsure. The others who were taken are more likely to survive, not being werewolves, but I cannot give a guarantee.”

Stiles’s breath catches (and he’s not doing this again), and he stuffs his fist in his mouth to keep from making embarrassing whimpering pain noises. Around the fist, he asks, “And everyone else in the pack?”

“The rest of you should survive. The beta in France may become either an alpha or an omega; it is difficult to tell at this time.”

Fucking shit. He takes the fist out of his mouth just enough to ask, “Why now? With a third of the pack out, why would they do this now?” Why wouldn’t they do it when he was there, so he could have helped Scott there instead of being at school not doing anything useful?

“I have a theory about that as well. Have you heard of the black moon?”

Stiles did so much research about lunar cycles after Scott was bitten that he knows this off the top of his head. “It’s when there are two new moons in a month. I mean, that’s one definition of it, but I’m assuming that’s the one you’re talking about.”

“It is. The new moon is the easiest time for the separation to happen—this is about the net power gain, and it takes the least energy to separate the territory from the pack at that time, leaving the most power remaining for the mage—and the black moon would make that even more effective.”

Jake grimaces at him. “Why would magic care about the calendar year?”

Deaton looks at him, and he’s almost smiling. “We’re not sure why magic cares about anything. We don’t know why it cares about the moon or about…anything. Perhaps it is because magic is based on our thought, and we think of it as mattering, so it does. Regardless, it is the case.”

“Fuck.” Stiles scrubs his hand through his hair. “Where do we find him? Them? Whatever. Women can be evil, too. I still remember Kate Argent.”

“In that, we do have an advantage. They must be keeping the pack near Beacon Hills, though outside of it. To gain the most energy from the Nemeton, they would want to be as close to it as possible.”

“And they’re alive? They’re going to be alive until—until the new moon?”

“There would be no use in severing them from the territory before then, so yes.”

“And the next new moon is in—”

“Four days.”

“—four days. Of course it is. Okay. We have four days—really three days—to do this, and we have to remember for four days. Or at least Lydia has to remember for four days and remind us. Is there anything else we need to cover, or is that it?”

Deaton shakes his head. “That is it. But you need to keep in mind, trying to remember means fighting against your own brain.”

Stiles doesn’t care. “Is that why you’re bleeding?”

Deaton looks at his hand like he had actually forgotten that it was _dripping blood_. “There are only a few ways for druids to gain power. You have experienced one of them in the form of human sacrifices. This is another form of that same idea. I am taking my own pain and using it to fuel my own power to fight the mage. It is a stop-gap measure, and one that I would not be able to teach you in the amount of time you will be here, assuming you do not already know it.”

Wow, that’s hardcore, even for Deaton. “So I can’t just cut myself and make myself remember?”

Jake makes an upset noise, but Stiles focuses on Deaton, because it’s a serious question. “Unfortunately, no. In truth, even I cannot cut myself and make myself. It is simply aiding in my focus, and it will fade soon.”

Jake steps towards him. “Why can’t I smell you bleed?”

“It seemed unwise to allow you to smell it, and with the amount of magic I am gaining from this, I am able to keep you from doing so.” And wow, he sounds more formal now than maybe ever before. Maybe it’s because he’s using so much magic that he is pulling back to his archaic roots, whatever those might be (and he was trained by the guy who was trained by Merlin, or something, so he could be super fucking old and they would never know). “I would suggest you begin looking now; it is impossible to know how long either you or I will be able to remember.”

That was a very good point. “Okay. Thank you.”

Stiles sets an alarm on his phone the second they’re in the car for sundown on the day of the new moon, then adds a note with the sharpie he’s keeping in his pocket (no, he’s not just happy to see you) on his arm about the date, because he’s going to forget. He knows that now, he can feel it wanting to slip, and it’s terrifying.

“How are you not forgetting?” Maybe Jake has some trick, something he’s doing that is letting him remember, because he doesn’t seem to be losing anything.

Jake glances at him, then pulls out of the parking lot and gets on the road. “Part of it may be because I’m a werewolf, or because I’m not associated with this territory and so I’m not tying them to it, but…I don’t have anything to remember.”

“You remember why we’re here even though I keep losing it.”

“That’s because I’m not remembering them—I’m remembering you.”

Oh, for God’s sake. “If this is supposed to be some romantic thing—”

Jake snorts. “Don’t get ahead of yourself; I meant it literally. I don’t know anything about them, so it’s not like I’m going to be thinking ‘oh, the alpha’—uh, fuck—‘Scott is missing.’ I’m thinking ‘Stiles’s friend is missing, and his name is Scott, and he’s an alpha. I don’t know if that’s what’s making the difference, but…I’m remembering.”

“Okay.” Stiles scrubs a hand across his face. “Okay. When we get back, we need to start looking for warehouses and abandoned buildings bordering Beacon Hills near the—near the, uh—” Fuck, what is it called? “The tree thing. The evil stupid tree.” He looks at Jake, who gives him an apologetic smile, which isn’t fucking useful.

“I’m sorry, I don’t—”

Damn it, Stiles just had this. They were just talking about this. “The tree. The tree that makes the territory so powerful, and they’re going to be ripping Scott away from it, and it’s going to be like a nuclear explosion, and we were just _talking about this_.”

Jake glances at him again, and there’s something worried on his face (and Stiles hates it, hates all of this, how is he forgetting so quickly, they were _just talking about this_ ). “The Nemeton?”

“Yes. Yes. The Nemeton.”

“I didn’t know it was a tree.”

Fuck. God. Stiles can’t do this, and they’re almost at his house, and he just wants to get out and run (run and never stop, run until he drops) but he has work to do, they have work to do, so he can’t. “It’s a tree. It’s a tree stump. It’s magic and there was a fox demon stuck in it and we sacrificed ourselves to it and it’s our fault, and fuck I need to get out of this car.”

Jake pulls over to the side of the road, and Stiles shoves his way out, stumbling onto the sidewalk and then taking off running (and he isn’t sure if he closed the door behind him, but Jake will close it, and he doesn’t care, he just needs to not be there, he just needs to be somewhere else, so he _runs_.

Stiles started running regularly a couple of years earlier, for lacrosse (for the pack, because they kept being chased by things and he wasn’t going to be the weak link), and first it was hard, and he felt stupid, running when he wasn’t being chased. But then Derek gave him permission (didn’t stop him), and he started running in the Preserve, and he didn’t need to worry about people watching him and judging (or assuming he’s running from prank or crime he pulled and then calling his dad).

So he runs, and he keeps running, and at some point his lungs start burning and his legs are on fire but they feel like if he stops he won’t be able to start again, and he’s in the middle of the Preserve and he’s alone.

He hasn’t been alone in a long time, not really. Not the kind of alone where he could scream and nobody would hear him, and he’s not sure if that makes the woods more scary or less, but for the first time in days, he can breathe.

But he has no idea why he’s here.

The woods, he knows. The woods he’s in because he went running, and that’s where he runs, and he was stressed and so he went running. But he’s home, and he was stressed, and he doesn’t know why, because he should be at school. Unless something happened, something Scott needs help with, and that’s why he came home. Though if there was something, Scott probably wouldn’t be letting him running around the woods alone, because he’s like a small fluffy worrier.

He has his phone (ha, he’s not totally falling apart), so he calls Scott, because he really should find out why he’s back in Beacon Hills. Which…doesn’t happen, because Scott’s phone goes immediately to voicemail. Which means either it’s off or he forgot to charge it again (which counts as off, actually, now that Stiles thinks about it). It’s probably the latter, because Stiles wouldn’t be out running when Scott was in danger.

Derek, then, is the next best choice (mostly because Stiles doesn’t really want to talk to Liam, and Malia is still occasionally a bit weird about picking up her phone), and wow, Stiles never thought he would think that, but he’s wearing a little wooden wolf on a chain around his neck that he’s 95% sure is from Derek, and things change. Go figure.

But Derek’s phone goes straight to voicemail, too, and now Stiles is starting to get worried, because two might be a coincidence, but in Beacon Hills, two usually means serial killer, and he’s seriously not ready to deal with another serial killer.

So he calls Lydia, because she might be away, but she always picks up, and she always charges her phone, and she’ll know if Scott or Derek are dead.

“Stiles?” (Worried, and that’s a bad sign.)

“Yeah.” He shoves some hair away from his face, looking around to make sure there’s nothing planning on eating him nearby. “Uh, do you know why I’m in—this isn’t going to make any sense, but…I’m in Beacon Hills, and I’m not sure why, and Scott’s and Derek’s phones are both going to voicemail, so do you know what’s going on?”

“Oh, Stiles.” (Sad, now, and that’s an even worse sign. “Look at your arm.”

His arm? What’s going on with his arm? It’s not injured, neither of them are, and he shoves up his right sleeve, then his left, and shit. _Shit_. “Is it true? Is—are they—is it true?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s true.” And she says more things, instructions, but Stiles can’t hear them over the rushing in his head and his gasping breaths as he sobs and remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's later than planned, but it kind of went not in the direction I was expecting, so...yeah.


	20. Chapter 20

Lydia is still talking when Stiles spots it. Just a stump, wide enough to sit on (for two people to sit on, with a Go board between them), peeking out from between the trees.

“It’s here.”

She stops, and he realizes how that could have sounded just as she demands, “Who? The person who took the pack? Get out of there, Stiles. Get out now.”

“No, the Nemeton. I don’t know how to find the Nemeton, but—”

“It lets you if it wants to.” She’s quiet for a second, and he starts approaching it. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t.”

She knows him too well. “What makes you think I’m thinking of doing anything?” He’s almost there, can almost touch it (though that would probably be a bad idea).

“Stiles, I mean it, the Nemeton is dangerous. We all know that.”

(Allison, a sword through her, Aiden dying, the life draining out of Stiles.) “I know. But—what if I can see them through the Nemeton?”

“What are you talking about?”

Stiles explains what Deaton said (it’s written on his arm, along with ScottDerekLiamMaliaKira missingtakengone) and then she’s silent for a long time (too long).

“It’s too dangerous, Stiles.”

That’s irrelevant. “But do you think it would work?”

She doesn’t respond immediately, but it’s the thinking sort of quiet. Finally, she says, “If the Nemeton is an integral part of the territory—and we don’t even know how they’re defining territory, in some bizarre metaphysical sense—then there is a chance that it might share the same connection—whatever that might be—to the pack. But there are too many unknowns there. And it’s a _tree_ , not some…sentient being.”

“It’s a magic tree.”

She sighs. “I’m not going to be able to talk you out of doing what you’re planning on doing, I know that, so just…come back with Jake to do it, please. In case something goes wrong.”

Jake. Fuck. Yet another person he forgot about. “But what if I can’t find it again?”

“Then it’s probably for the best.” She hesitates. “I still think this is a bad idea.”

“Objection noted.” He wants to touch the tree, now that he’s in front of it, but she’s right that doing it while alone in the middle of the forest is a bad idea. Like a potentially-get-him-killed-before-he-can-save-his-friends bad idea. “Thank you. For…picking up the phone.”

“It was a good excuse for getting out of my intro to astrophysics class. My professor is a moron.”

Right. “Can you—”

“I’m not hanging up until you’re standing in front of Jake, so start walking.” He does. “Now, how are you feeling?”

(To which the answer is, like he shouldn’t have run with bruised ribs.)

\--

Jake is…upset. Understandably, probably, except Stiles doesn’t have the mental capacity at the moment to deal with an overprotective alpha werewolf who isn’t Scott (and sometimes he can barely deal with overprotective Scott).

“You want to talk to a sentient tree?”

Stiles looks up from rifling one-handed through his bag, then holds his phone out. “What I want is to find some pain medication. Meet Lydia.”

Jake takes the phone, and his expression shifts in a way that means Lydia is chewing him out about something. Which is actually pretty entertaining, or would be if not for the circumstances.

And—ha, pain medication. Because his ribs are not happy with him. He dry swallows two of them (and is immediately remind that that’s a terrible idea, whoops, because if he survives this he would like his throat and stomach lining to remain intact). “I’m not going to let anything happen to him. I promise.”

Stiles isn’t a child. He snatches the phone back, saying, “I can take care of myself.”

“You’re going against something Deaton is worried about. Having a werewolf on your side can’t hurt.”

“A werewolf isn’t going to save me if the Nemeton decides to eat me or whatever.”

Jake stares wide-eyed at him, but he really doesn’t have time for Jake’s shit, not right now. In his ear, Lydia snaps, “Then don’t do it.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“Stiles—”

“I’ll talk to you later.” Because Stiles needs to get this done before he loses his nerve.

“I’ll call you at nine-thirty in the morning your time. Stay alive, Stiles.”

“Thanks.” They both hang up, and Stiles turns his attention to Jake. So here’s the plan.”

\--

They find the Nemeton with worryingly little trouble (Stiles swears it moves, because it wasn’t this close last time, and that means it wants them [him] to find it), and Jake loots at it from afar as Stiles approaches. He isn’t sure how to connect with it—if he _can_ connect with it—but he has to try.

Stiles looks back at Jake, who looks unhappy. “So if I start screaming—” He doesn’t actually know what that means. “Pull me away from it. Probably better if you do it without touching my skin, because that might pull you in, too.”

Jake takes a step towards him, looks at the evil magic tree, and stops. “Are you sure about this?”

“Nope. Bleeping is probably fine—apparently that’s what happened when they connected through me. Seizures are probably bad. And I’d recommend not standing too close, because I really don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“This sounds like a worse idea the more you talk.”

Jake’s right (this sounds awful and stupid and dangerous) but it needs to happen. Just in case it works. Just in case. Because if it does, if it might, Stiles is willing to do anything. So he spins back to the tree and, before he can think too much harder about this supremely bad idea, crouches down and puts a hand on the Nemeton.

Pain. Darkness. Pain.

Pain. Light. Pain.

Pain. Gray. Pain.

Noise. Panting. Gasping. Breathing. He’s breathing.

They’re breathing.

He is they, and there is a throbbing in his arms and he can _’t_ see grayconcretemetal aching in his teeth his lungs his heart graypain they are

On the Nemeton, and there is a Go board between them, and he is

Wrapped in bandages

Whole

Arms strung up with

Metal

Bandages

There is a chess board between them, and he is

Pressed up against a wall, a hand around his throat

Is burning

With his teeth and his arms

Are wrapped around his body and they are drowning with their heads above water

Tricking down his throat, but it isn’t enough, he’s so thirsty, and there’s a hand wrenching his head back by his hair and pouring water down his throat, and he’s swallowing, swallowing, trying to swallow so he doesn’t drown, and then he’s coughing and sputtering as his throat burns, and he can’t stop coughing, coughing, coughing—

And then they’re not in the gray place anymore, and he isn’t coughing, and he isn’t they anymore, but they are there, warm and candlelight sliding and there’s a hand on his chest and a hand between his legs and he’s arching and trying to hold on, trying to touch, but it’s like trying to swim through oil, but he manages to get a leg around the back of his legs and—

He’s burning, his throat dry and his lungs full of water and his arms screaming and at least it’s not electricity this time but maybe it would be better if they just electrocuted him and got it over with because he doesn’t know why they’re still alive—

Everything goes greenbrownblack and then Stiles is on his hands and knees in the forest, throwing up everything he’s eaten in the last day (which is probably not as much as it should be, and wow, that’s not a pleasant observation to be having while throwing it up). He’s dry heaving when a too-warm hand settles on the back of his neck (and he feels like his ribs are cracking all over again).

There’s a voice, too, behind him, saying, “Stiles? Stiles, I need to know that you’re okay. Can you say something?”

“Fucking son of a bitch.” He drags in a sharp breath; it burns going down. “How long?”

“Five minutes. Uh, just over. Do you want to get up?” Between that and staring down at his puke and bile, standing sounds better. He nods, and an arm closes around his shoulders, dragging him up to more-or-less standing (which is really just leaning against Jake, whose ridiculous body heat feels good against Stiles’s heat-chilled skin). “You okay?”

Stiles thinks about swallowing, tastes vomit, and spits it out instead; it falls, congealing in the dirt, on the forest floor. “Not really.”

“Okay. I’m going to get you back to your house, and then we can have a nice long talk about your reckless and idiotic decisions that don’t _help with anything_.” Jake’s voice goes low and tight on the last words, his arms closing a little too tightly around Stiles, and it hurts.

“Blatant lie.”

The arms relax, then flex, and then he _picks Stiles up_ , which Stiles would protest more if he thought he could actually keep his feet on the ground without Jake’s help. “What was that?”

“Lie. Did do something. Connected.”

Jake blinks down at him, and wow, his lips are really red. “To Scott?”

Stiles shakes his head, which bashes it against Jake’s ridiculously hard chest (and do all werewolves just work out all the time, or does changing magically give them abs?). “Derek.”

Jake stops, which makes Stiles’s brain feel like it’s sloshing in his head, and then he keeps walking, which doesn’t really help with the sloshing feeling. “Why did you connect with Derek?”

Does Jake really think he knows what’s going on? (Except of course he does, because he isn’t from Beacon Hills. He’s from somewhere where things fit into neat little boxes and bad things go bump in the night but disappear when the sun comes up. What would he know about magic trees and bad guys coming back to life?) “I don’t know. But I _know_.”

They’re at the car now, and Stiles puts him down to lean him against the car, one hand around his waist to hold him up, and he would protest except his feet are threatening to slip out from under him and he doesn’t really want to fall on his ass on the weird Preserve half-dirt road.

Jake looks at him. “Know what?”

Stiles blinks at him. “What?”

“You said you know something.” He sets about unlocking and opening the passenger-side door, hand steady on Stiles’s side.

“Oh.” Jesus, he’s such a mess. “Yeah. I know where they are.”

The hand clenches, then lets go, which is super unhelpful because Stiles’s knees immediately buckle and he crashes to the ground, catching himself of his forearms like Derek taught him years ago so he doesn’t break his wrists. “Sorry. Damn it. Sorry.” The passenger door open, Jake slides his arm around his shoulders again, lifting him up to set him down in the seat like he’s a child. Which he kind of feels like at the moment, his limbs refusing to do what he wants them to, his hands too weak to hold onto the door handle.

“You know where they are?”

“I—” Stiles tries to scrub his hand against his face, manages to whack himself in the nose instead. “You know when you’ve been somewhere once, maybe twice, and you know where it is, but you couldn’t—you couldn’t point to it on a map, or direct yourself there? Like if you were there, you would know it, but you couldn’t just start driving one day, or running, and get there?” Jake doesn’t say anything, so Stiles keeps talking. “There’s a church in Mexico like that, that I’ve been to twice, that’s like that. Scary-ass church, most terrifying place I’ve ever been to, and that’s saying something, La Iglesia, and I can remember that church like the back of my fucking hand, that’s how much it scared me, but I wouldn’t be able to get you there if you gave me an NSA satellite and my own plane. So—so I know where they are, but I can’t—I can’t find it.”

“So we’ll go through all of the warehouses and all of the abandoned buildings, just like you said, and you’ll find it when you find it.”

“Why didn’t it—” Stiles tries to hit the door, fails because his arm is flopping around like a ragdoll. “Why didn’t it do more?”

Jake closes the door and walks around, then opens his door and gets in, all without saying anything. All without looking at Stiles, and maybe this is just one more thing he fucked up. Maybe here’s where Jake walks away. Maybe it’s the magic tree that does it, or Stiles’s magic five-minute connection to Derek Hale, or any of the dozens of other things going on at the moment.

They’re halfway through town when Jake speaks again. “You were screaming.”

“When? Is that why you pulled me off the Nemeton?” Was that the whole reason he had broken the connection?

“The whole five minutes.” Jake’s voice is still hard, tight. “The whole fucking—the whole five minutes, or six minutes, however long it was, I wasn’t exactly timing it. You spent the whole time screaming, and then you _stopped_ , and you think screaming is bad, but screaming is nothing, screaming is—the silence is—you looked like you were dying. You looked like you just stopped, and I can’t—do you know what that looks like? Do you—Jesus, Stiles, do you know what that looks like?”

“I’ve seen my friends tortured,” and whoops, he didn’t mean to say that. “Sorry for the screaming.”

“I don’t—” Jake scrubs a hand across his face. “We need to stop talking about this. We need to talk about something else. Now. Please.”

Something else. Stiles could talk about something else. He was the master of talking about irrelevant things. “I once spent six hours Wikipedia hopping and got from succubus to Soulcaliber.”

A smile twitches on Jake’s face. “Why were you reading about succubi?”

“Senior year we had a theory about one of our classmates. Turned out to be wrong, but I figured it was a good thing to add to the bestiary anyway. Not that Wikipedia is a great source of information, but it’s pretty good for basic background information, regions of origin, stuff like that.”

“You have a bestiary?”

“Yeah. It’s mostly built from the Argent bestiary and our own experiences, though there are a couple of entries we’ve built off of info in the Hale vault. We’re still working on translating it—some of the more esoteric stuff is hard to work from Archaic Latin to English. The nuances are really hard, at least according to Lydia. I’ve gotten half-decent at regular Latin—if there is such a thing as regular Latin—but getting the details right is too important when doing these kinds of translations, so we have to leave it up to her. And, uh…Allison helped, too, but she’s—she’s gone, now, so that’s not really—not really an option anymore.”

“Allison Argent.”

It’s not quite a question, but Stiles nods anyway. “Yeah.”

“She’s—everyone knows about the Argents. They’re a bit of an anomaly in the hunting community, and given hunters, that’s saying something.”

“Because of her relationship with—uh, with Scott?” The name is hard to find, even though he’s thinking about it, and he sinks his teeth into his lip to keep from doing something stupid like crying.

Jake shakes his head. “Hunters have dalliances with werewolves; it happens.” Like Kate. And that was the way that they thought about it? Jesus. “No, it’s that they changed their Code. First family I’ve heard of changing their Code in—in forever, in the history that I know at least.”

“She did it. She was the one that changed it. It was, uh, ‘we protect those who cannot protect themselves.’ She was sick of them going after people who didn’t deserve it, people who were change against their will, people who were just—just kids. Like, uh, like Isaac, and Boyd and Erica. And the shit her grandfather did, and her aunt; the Code wouldn’t have stopped them, but the idea—I mean, the idea matters. Though not anymore, I guess, because she’s gone, so there’s just Chris left.”

“There are still cousins; the Argent line is still going, and as far as I know, they follow the new Code.” Jake pulls the car into Stiles’s driveway. “We’re here. Can you walk?”

“Yeah.” He’s going to walk if it kills him (not literally; he’s not likely to kill himself trying to walk. He can just crawl if necessary).

And sure enough, he does manage to walk (slowly) all the way up the stairs to his bedroom, his legs trembling with effort, his throat burning, his lungs on fire. And then he sort of collapses on his bed, waving his arm fruitlessly at his laptop sitting on the desk until Jake grabs him for it and settles next to him with his own laptop.

“You take the area outside of Beacon Hills—Beacon Hills, not Beacon County, there’s a difference—to the east of the Nemeton,” Stiles tells him as their computers start booting up. “I’m going to take the west. Catalog all empty warehouses and abandoned buildings, with addresses, square footage, and distance to the Nemeton as the crow flies. Put it in Excel—it’ll be a pain now, but easier to sort through later so we can rule things out.”

Jake frowns at him. “Why don’t we rule things out now?”

“Better to have too many choices and then eliminate them, because you don’t need to delete it when you eliminate it. If you just don’t include it, you could miss things, but elimination after the fact—it’s like how you can always cut things shorter, but you can’t make them longer once they’re cut.”

“Okay.” Jake logs into his computer, then snorts.

“What?”

He shakes his head. “It’s like college. You know, you expect stuff like this to be more exciting, with bad guys jumping out of shadows and a lot more sex against walls, but this is—it’s like college, only without the sex. Not that I was having sex in college. But people were.”

Stiles shrugs. “Yeah, well, a lot of investigative stuff is like this.” He gestures to the evidence board in the corner of his room. “That’s the tip of the iceberg.” He shoves a hand through his hair (and this time his hand actually works well enough for him to get it to his hair and not, say, his nose). “And Jake?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to need you to remind me of what we’re doing.”

\--

Three hours later, they have a list of a hundred twelve warehouses and abandoned buildings (because apparently a previously-but-no-longer flourishing warehouse district is _just outside of Beacon Hills_ , _fuck his life_ ) organized by distance to Nemeton, and Stiles’s nose is bleeding for the third time.

Tilting his head back with a tissue pressed to it (and ew, he can taste blood, and thank god he no longer passes out at the sight of it), Stiles mumbles, “This is getting really fucking old.”

Jake shoves another tissue at him. “You’re telling me.”

Stiles changes tissues, dropping the old one in the wastepaper basket that has been migrated to sit right next to the bed (it’s getting more use than its gotten since he found military-command-kink gay porn), then pulls the new one away from his nose to look at it. And hey, not much blood. “I think it’s stopping.”

“Maybe _we_ should stop.”

For fuck’s sake. This is nothing. Stiles turns to look at Jake. “Look, I don’t know what making myself remember is going to do to me, so if I start to lose my cognitive function, I need you to—”

“Get you out of here?”

That’s the last thing Stiles wants. “No. To make me remember, whatever it takes. Keep making me remembering, and just ignore the nosebleeds. Make me find them. Please promise me you’ll do that.”

“I’m not going to watch you die for them.”

Stiles shoves at him. “Then go. I’ll figure it out without you. Enough alarms, enough reminders, I’ll remember. I’ll make myself remember if I have to carve it into my skin so it won’t go away.”

Frustration flares in Jake’s eyes. “Why are you pushing this so hard? It’s tearing you apart, I can see it.” He gestures towards the wastepaper basket (and yeah, okay, that looks bad, but who the fuck cares if it helps them find the pack). “Do you think your friends want you to lose yourself for them?”

“They’re my _family_.” Why doesn’t Jake see that? “I have to save them.”

“From what I’ve heard, all you do is save them. And you’re the one they keep putting in danger. The alpha pack, the crazy Hale, the Nogitsune—”

“It was me,” and Stiles hadn’t meant to scream that, but he had, and it’s out now. It’s out.

Jake blinks at him. “What?”

“The Nogistune, it was me. I let it in, I had it in me, so Allison’s death, everything that happened, it’s on me. And if they hadn’t stopped me, I might have killed everyone, just because I could. So I’m going to find them, and if you don’t want to do it with me, I’ll do it alone.”

Jake stares at him for a long moment, too long, then asks softly, “Find who, Stiles?”

Who? Who the hell does Jake think? “Derek and Scott and—and—” Fuck. Fucking mother fucker. Goddamn fucking son of a bitch. He knows who he’s looking for. He does. He does. He knows this. “Derek and Scott and—fucking—and Malia and Kira who shouldn’t even be here and fucking Liam the douchebag lacrosse player. I know who I’m looking for. I know who I’m looking for. I know who I’m looking for. I know who I’m”—a sob catches in his throat—“looking for.” The words are coming out now, again and again, and Jake folds Stiles into his arms and holds him against his chest as Stiles sobs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was really hard to write, and I didn't really know where I was going to end it until about ten minutes ago, so...yeah. The next chapter should be up by Friday.
> 
> There are probably 3-4 chapters left in Part Two, and then we get to move on to Part Three, which will be super Sterek-heavy, so..yeah. There's that to look forward to.
> 
> NOTE: Sorry that the next chapter isn't up yet. It will be soon, hopefully, but class and work just started, so everything's a bit in the air at the moment.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: There is mildly explicit sexual content in this chapter and some very mildly dubious consent (see end notes for more explanation).

Finally, Stiles pulls away, sitting cross-legged with Jake across from him, and he can’t bring himself to look up. “Do you know what forgetting feels like?”

“What do you mean?”

“Forgetting.” Stiles looks up just long enough to wave his hands a bit. “You know. Forgetting. It’s not—people think of forgetting as just losing something, and most of the time that’s good, except when it’s bad. You know, forgetting to do your laundry, forgetting a friend’s birthday, things like that. But that’s—that’s nothing. That’s barely—I mean, who cares? So fucking what? But forgetting. Forgetting is like something slipping away, and you try so hard to hold onto it, but the harder you try, the further it slips. Like catching smoke, but only a moron tries to catch smoke, because that’s fucking dumb. It’s like trying to drink water from your hands, but you only have two fingers on each hand, but it’s your brain, and things keep slipping away, and one day you don’t remember where you’re going and the next day you don’t remember where you are and the day after that you might not remember who you are, and then what are you supposed to do?”

Jake reaches towards him. “Stiles—”

With a quick shake of his head, Stiles jerks away. “So you see, this is why I can’t forget my friends. I can’t lose them. Because them, who they are, that’s part of me, that’s who I am, and if I lose that…if I lose that, then what I am supposed to do?”

“You’re not going to lose them. I promise.”

“Promises are, uh,”—Stiles swallows—“promises are a funny thing, you know. It’s worse to make a promise and then fail to keep it than not to make one at all. So—so don’t make me that promise.”

“Okay.” Jake nods. “Okay. Right now, you need food—you look terrible.”

“Thanks.”

Jake smirks at him. “I just speak the truth. If you want, I can go cook something for dinner. Is your dad going to be home?”

Stiles rolls to his feet, grabbing one more tissue to scrub it across his face and hopefully get the rest of the blood off. “He’s not going to be home tonight, and I can deal with it.”

“I’m your guest—I should help.”

“You should let me cook the goddamn meal so I have something to do with my hands.” Stiles forces the irrational irritation down. “And I don’t know if you can cook.”

Jake rolls his eyes. “I spent the last few years with dead parents.” (And Stiles really wants to talk about that at some point, but he has more important issues to deal with at the moment.) “I know how to cook. But yeah, okay. You okay with us working on it together? I want to contribute.”

Stiles starts out of his room with Jake following him, because he needs to move. “Yeah, fine, whatever, you can help. You can peel potatoes” (Thanksgiving, and _pack_ ) and Stiles misses a step and almost falls down the stairs “and I’ll cut the rest of the vegetables.”

There’s no way Jake didn’t notice his slip, but he doesn’t comment, instead asking, “What are we making?”

“Food.” Stiles doesn’t have a plan, just needs to start doing something, and he figures he can figure it out later. He steps out into the kitchen and immediately starts grabbing stuff to cook with.

Next to him, Jake shrugs. “Okay.” And then they get to work.

It’s nice, working in the kitchen, mindless and simple and the safest thing Stiles does with his day, and he doesn’t have to _think_ , and he never gets to not-think, but now he just cuts and chops and sautés and adds some ground meat from the fridge (his father had better not be making himself hamburgers) and cuts the potatoes into wedges and roasts them in the oven and tries not to think.

“You okay?”

Stiles flinches because he had forgotten that Jake was there (had forgotten that not everybody tripped over everything like Scott or lurked like Derek or complained like Liam, and those names as coming and slipping even as he thinks of them), then nods and goes back to shoving meat and vegetables around a pan. “Yeah.” (Scott and Derek and Liam and Kira and Malia, he’s going to remember it, he’s going to remember them, he’s going to, he’s _going_ to.)

A hand lands on his shoulder (Derek spinning him around, pinning him against a wall and snarling about him because _how could he be so stupid, so reckless, what the fuck did he think he was doing_ ) and he flinches away so hard he almost sticks his hand in the pain. “You’re crying.”

Huh. There’s wetness on his cheeks, so maybe he is. “It’ll add salt to the dish.”

“Stiles—”

He stabs at the pain with the spatula. “I can’t do the attempting-to-comfort-Stiles thing right now. Like, if you try, I will throw this pan at your head.”

Jake snorts. “Yeah, okay. Remind me not to let you anywhere near pans when we get back to campus.”

“I’m pretty handy with a baseball bat, too.”

“Good to know.”

Jake sets the table in silence, and then they sit down and eat and it’s…quiet. And Stiles doesn’t do well with quiet.

“Can you tell me about your parents?”

Jake blinks at him, and whoops, that was probably insensitive. Not that Stiles is really the pinnacle of sensitivity on a good day, but of anyone he should know better than to try to make people talk about their dead family members. Last time someone tried to make him talk about his mom, he freaked the fuck out, so maybe not the best idea to ask the alpha werewolf about his alpha father and his apparently screwed up mother.

And then he sighs, dropping his fork on the plate with a clatter. “Yeah. I probably should have, anyway, because it’s kind of fucked up and doesn’t really reflect all that well on me.”

That’s…unnerving, because Stiles knows about fucked up families that don’t reflect well on someone, and he doesn’t really know what Jake would consider like that. “You don’t actually need to tell me.” Though he really does want to know; he really needs to know.

“Yeah, I kind of should. I should have told you as soon as you joined the pack, or Elizabeth should have, but…well we didn’t, so it’s probably good that you asked. My dad—my dad was alpha, and he was a good alpha. He, uh, he died from—there’s a disease, there’s basically one disease that affects werewolves, where basically their metabolism speeds up until it burns through them. That’s not—that’s not really the fucked up part. I mean, it sucked, but it just—it sucked. But, uh, my mother—my mom—what do you know about hunters?”

That’s random, except—was his mother killed by hunters? “Other than the Argents? I mean, we dealt with the Calaveras for a while, and mostly they’re torturing motherfuckers, but…hunters are neutral until they go crazy, and then they’re chaotic evil and kill teenagers and burn families to death.”

There’s a pause, and then Jake snorts. “Okay, that was not really what I was expecting, though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given everything I’ve heard from you and about Beacon Hills. Yeah, uh—my mother was killed by hunters.”

Shit. “I’m sorry.”

“No, that was the best possible end result. My—she—she bit humans.” He scrubs a hand through his hair, skin pulled tight against his cheekbones in his tension. “Yeah, she bit humans, and she was fucking nuts, and my alpha turned her over to the hunters, and they killed her, and that was basically the best possible thing that could have happened, and now you know that I’m from a really fucked up family.”

Wow. That’s terrible, and Stiles really wants to say that he’s sorry that he had such a shitty mother, and then he opens his mouth and what comes out is, “Did she ever bite you?” Which is not what he was intending to say. At all. But he has no filter. “Fuck. Sorry. Ignore that I asked you that. I’m really sorry. That’s really shitty. I’m sorry.”

“It’s, uh—” He shoves his left sleeve up to his elbow, and just below it is a white scar in the shape of a set of teeth. “Once, when I was little, and it was early enough that it healed to a scar instead of actually healing. Elizabeth has—uh, if you want to know, you should ask her, I probably shouldn’t tell you. Anyway, so yeah, that’s—that’s in our pack, or was, and you probably should have known that beforehand, and that was bad of me as the alpha, but I didn’t really want you to think of me as being from that, so I didn’t, and we can finish talking about this when we don’t have bigger problems.”

Right. Bigger problems. Like why he’s at home, and there’s something, some reason for that, and he knows it, he knows it, he _knows_ it.

“Your arm.”

His arm? He looks at his arms, then shoves up his sleeves and looks again; there’s writing on his left arm, and fuck. _Fuck_. “Okay. Yeah. Bigger problems. There are bigger problems. What have we—”

“We have a list of places to look, and we’ll go tomorrow. It’s a mage, and we have until the new moon.”

Okay. “You need to—you need help me remember.”

Jake examines him for a moment, then stabs a piece of potato and sticks it in his mouth. “Soon. And call Sun. He keeps bitching at me that he’s worried about you.”

“Fine.”

\--

They end up doing homework again, because they need to do that so they don’t get in trouble for missing a week of class, and every ten minutes or so Stiles writes himself another reminder post-it note so he doesn’t forget.

And if it makes his head throb and his nose bleed, well, at least he remembers.

Halfway through reading a terrible piece on the evils of passive voice, Stiles looks up to see Jake watching him, a half-smile on his face. Pulling the highlighter out of his mouth, he asks, “What?”

“You’re adorable when your concentrating isn’t giving you nosebleeds.”

Okay. “Thanks?”

“You’re welcome.”

Stiles looks back down at the paper, which looks just as awful while he was reading it, and no, he’s not going to keep reading this. “You done with your homework? Can we stop doing this?”

“I’m not your mother.”

He barely flinches now, which good for him (he hasn’t flinched in years thinking about her, not when anyone is around). “Yeah. Well, I’m done, and it’s—fuck, okay, we’ve been doing this for a while.”

Jake glances at his phone, the scowls. “Okay, yeah, I’m done. How’s your memory doing?”

“My friends are missing, and we’re here to find them, and it’s a mage, and I’m forgetting—I’m forgetting their names, and—and I’m forgetting their names.” He flicks a post-it note (they’re missing they’re missing they’re missing find them). “I need to find them, and I only have a few days left.”

“We only have a few days left.” Jake reaches over and grabs one of post-it notes, looking at it. “I don’t know why I’m remembering, but I should be able to help you.” He glances at the note again (it’s all my fault), then says, “Tell me about Allison Argent.”

Now he flinches (he killed her, he killed, it’s all his fault, he’s sitting on the Nemeton and there’s a Go board between them). “Is this some sort of making me share my pain because I made you share yours?”

“Fuck you, no, I wouldn’t do that to you. Tell me about Allison Argent.”

“Allison Argent was a world-class archer who ended as the matriarch of the Argent family after Peter Hale killed her aunt—which didn’t actually last, she came back to the dead as a fucking were-whatever the fuck she was—and her mom killed herself after being bitten. I killed her.”

Another glance at the post-it note. “Why do you remember Allison?”

“Did you miss the fact that I killed her?”

“How did you know her?”

“I _killed_ her.”

“How did you _know_ her?”

“ _Scott loved her._ ”

A smile breaks across Jake’s face. “Tell me about that, then.”

Stiles scrubs a hand across his face. “What is that going to help with? What am I supposed to do with reminiscing about killing my best friend’s first love?”

“Because you just remembered he was your best friend for the first time in hours. The mage doesn’t seem to have taken Argent from you, or those other people you mentioned—Peter Hale and Argent’s aunt and mother—and so you can remember everyone through her. Because she’s not part of the pack anymore, but she was, and so you can remember the pack by remembering Allison. I hope. I don’t know what I’m doing, but—but maybe you’ll remember.”

“You’re not going to know if I’m telling you the truth.”

Jake shrugs. “Doesn’t really matter. It just matters if you know. Just tell me what you remember about Allison. Just remember them through Allison.”

Stiles has to put the thoughts in order, but he has them (for the first time, he has all of the thoughts), and then he tells Jake about Allison.

It’s weird, talking about her; he never did it before, not since she died, because Scott never wants to talk about her, not really (and Stiles doesn’t blame him, he really doesn’t, but sometimes he needs to talk to someone who understands and the number of people who do keeps getting smaller), and he doesn’t know how to talk about it with Lydia, and maybe they all should have just sat down and talked about her, really talked about her, so they could move on in peace instead of all pretending that they weren’t missing bits of themselves that they lost along the way.

But that’s what they do in Beacon Hills, isn’t it. They pretend nothing happened, pretend that once whatever shitty thing is going on is done that they’re all fine, and the dead are gone and the living are okay and they go to school the next day with half their homework done and a bottle of ibuprofen in the bags of the humans because their bruises haven’t quite healed yet. And it was like leading two lives, and the more they intersected the more they pretended they didn’t, the harder the lines they drew, but it never quite worked, because monsters don’t play by the rules, and sometimes neither could they.

And Stiles killed people, and he would do it again, and sometimes that seems like the worst part of it all, because his dad is the Sheriff (he wants to be the Sheriff, maybe, or something like it) and Stiles has done things that his dad should arrest him for, should hate him for. And Allison (beautiful, brilliant, vindictive, dangerous Allison) is dead because of him, and sometimes he thinks it should be him instead, sometimes he thinks Scott and everyone else would have been better off with someone who knew how to fire a weapon and how to talk to Hunters and how to solve problems instead of just flailing around in the dark.

And when he’s done talking, it’s like a weight has been lifted, like he’s free, but also like he can’t breathe, like he’ll never breathe again, because Allison is gone, she’s gone, and it’s his fault, and all of this is his fault, and if he loses his friends he doesn’t know how he’ll breathe again.

Jake reaches out and touches a few fingers to his face, and it’s not romantic, not sexual, not trying to be anything except comfort, and Stiles needs that now, needs some reminder that he has a pack (and he hated that idea, wanted to get away from it all, even when he was clinging on to stay, and now all he wants is to never let go again).

“Can you stay?”

Jake blinks at him, the hand recoiling a little, and then Jake turns the movement into moving his hand to Stiles’s shoulder like maybe Stiles won’t have noticed (but he always notices, that’s what he does, that’s his job). “What?”

Yeah, not repeating that, not with that reaction. “Nothing.” Stiles starts shoving books and papers off his bed so he can get ready to sleep, which he needs to do (doesn’t want to, really doesn’t want to, but his head is throbbing and his nose is probably going to start bleeding again and he really should sleep). But he needs to keep his body and his mind functional (enough) for the moment so he can find them, find his friends (Scott and Derek and Malia and Kira and whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is Liam shit he knows this).

A hand closes around his wrist to stop him, and for a second he flashes back to _a hand on his wrist, nails biting in_. “Stiles.”

Fine. He’ll swallow his pride and ask again if Jake really wants him to. “Can you stay? Fine. Yes, that’s me, needy fucking Stiles who doesn’t want to sleep by himself because he’s afraid of waking up and not knowing where he is.”

“Okay.”

What? “What do you mean, okay?”

“You want me to stay with you, I’ll stay with you.” He strokes his thumb against Stiles’s throat. “Are you forgetting how I feel about you? You think I’m going to turn down a chance to sleep in the same bed as you, even if we’re not fucking? I mean, I’m trying pretty damn hard to be gentlemanly or whatever the fuck I’m supposed to be, but I’m not quite that good.”

“Gentlemanly? It’s not the Victorian era, and I’m not some blushing virgin.”

“Yeah, well, I’m trying to not ravish you when you sprawl all over your bed with me.”

Because that’s so impressive. “Congratulations, you’ve managed to not be a rapist.”

Jake snorts. “Thanks.” He looks at down at what he’s wearing. “Yeah, so, I’m going to stay fully dressed tonight, so you don’t get stabbed by the boner I inevitably wake up with.”

“Is that supposed to be some sort of euphemism?”

Jake throws up his hands, climbing off the bed with his laptop to set it aside. “Please stop taunting me. I’m trying, I really am, and yeah, I do want to fuck you, I want to keep you in bed until you wouldn’t even consider getting up, I want to do all these things to you, but you don’t want me to, so I’m staying away. So please just let me be not-a-rapist in peace.”

Abruptly, Stiles feels guilty, because yeah, he was teasing him and flirting a little bit, because it’s easier than trying to beg for someone to keep him company so he doesn’t lose his fucking mind when he wakes up in the morning. But he hadn’t meant to make him feel bad, and he keeps forgetting that Jake actually likes him like that. Because nobody likes him like that, not really, and even though he doesn’t want to pursue something with Jake, at least not right now, it’s really hard to believe that it’s real.

“Sorry.” Stiles moves his laptop out of the way, then rolls off his bed to go brush his teeth and pee. He has no interest in wearing jeans to bed, because he’s not a masochist and he knows he’s going to feel like shit (more like shit) if he does that, so he brings some sweatpants and a t-shirt with him to change into.

When he gets back, Jake is standing next to the bed, staring at it like it holds the secrets to the universe (which on some mornings feels true), and he doesn’t move until Stiles finishes putting his clothes in his growing pile of dirty laundry to drag back to college with him. “I wasn’t sure what was your side of the bed.”

“It’s not really big enough to have sides.” Which might end up being a problem. Stiles walks around him, then crawls on and flops down on the side closer to the wall. “I’ll sleep here, and sorry if I end up hitting you.”

The bed dips, then settles, and then Jake is lying next to him, elbow touching Stiles’s temple as he sticks his hands behind his head. “I’m a werewolf; I can take it. Is your dad going to freak out if he comes in and sees us sleeping together?”

Hopefully, his dad won’t be coming in and all. “I’m in college; he’ll probably just throw some condoms at us.”

Jake snorts. “Right. How are your ribs doing?”

“Better than yesterday, worse than before the crash, and whoa, what the hell are you doing?” Jake’s hand has snaked up under Stiles’s shirt, spreading across his ribs, and that’s totally not what he was expecting.

“You’ll sleep easier if you aren’t in pain. Now get some rest, and I promise not to molest you in your sleep.”

Stiles starts to say, “Thanks,” or tries to, but between one breath and the next exhaustion hits him as the pain finally drains from his body, and he falls asleep.

\--

Hands slide up his chest, calluses catching on his nipples, and it feels like he’s about to levitate his way off the bed because _why won’t he just hurry the fuck up and fuck him already_ but there’s just a laugh and then one hand slides back down to slip between his legs, closing over the base of his dick. Not moving, not sliding, just pressure, and he tries to thrust up into it, to get _something_ , but they _just won’t move_.

A laugh, deep and rough, and then teeth nip against his collarbone, his throat. “Is there something you want?”

Stiles arches again, trying to get some friction so maybe he can get off, but they hold him down with ease, free hand moving to secure his hands over his head so he can’t reach out, can’t touch. “You know there is.”

“Maybe I should make you beg for it.”

Stiles tries to yank a hand free, fails. “Fuck you.”

They laugh again. “Now I’ll definitely make you beg for it.” He opens his mouth to respond, but the thumb (just the thumb, goddamn them) strokes up Stiles’s dick, which is so fucking hard it feels like it might break in half, or explode, or just drive him fucking crazy, and Stiles’s entire body strains upward because goddamn that feels good and he needs _more_. “Yes? Were you going to say something?”

“Please.” The thumb moves again, and he moans, his breath coming harder now. “Please, God, fuck me, get me off, do something, please, please, _please_.”

“Good boy,” they say, but someone is saying, “Stiles,” and he’s on his side and there’s a body behind him and he wakes up but it’s like falling slowly onto a cloud and he’s not sure what’s going on and he’s not sure that he cares because there’s a hand on his stomach just above the tent in his sweatpants and he just wants it to move lower, just a little bit lower.

The person says, “Stiles,” again, and it’s Jake, and he’s not sure what’s going on but Jake is there so he’s probably okay.

“Where am I?”

There’s hot breath against the back of his neck, and warmth against his spine, and he misses feeling this warm, misses people wrapped around him when the nightmares got too bad and none of them could sleep because there were things in the night that could kill them all. “In your room.” Jake sounds as sleepy as Stiles feels, and maybe they can just stay there, even though that doesn’t sound right.

“In your dreams.”

The breath turns into lips, teeth, and then he says, “In my dreams, you would be in my room, safe and defensible and warm and smelling of happiness and not pain, so this isn’t my dream. But it is your room.” The hand starts small circles on Stiles’s stomach, pleasure mixed with warmth and a little bit of heat, and Stiles leans back against Jake’s body because that sounds good to him. “We should probably get up.”

“Mm.” But neither of the move, because Stiles doesn’t want to, he really doesn’t, he just wants to stay here in the warmth of Jake’s body, where nothing hurts and he doesn’t have to—

There’s a shrill ringing, and Jake shoots off his body so fast there’s a second before the covers fall to the bed where he had been laying, and Stiles flails upright because what the fuck is going on. Halfway across the room from him, Jake is standing hunched over, half aroused and looking as miserable as Stiles has ever seen him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m really fucking sorry, I forgot, I forgot, I’m sorry.” The ringing comes again, and Jake flinches, his mouth closing over whatever else he was going to repeat next, and then he strides over to the nightstand and grabs Stiles’s vibrating phone, throwing it at him.

The phone hits Stiles in the chest, and he lets it bounce off and ring once more in his lap before he manages to summon the presence of mind to actually pick it up because he has no idea what is happening. “Hello?”

“It’s Lydia, the pack is missing, you need to find them, it’s a mage, you have until the new moon, what do you remember?”

The fuck? “It’s seriously too early for this.”

Lydia sighs. “What do you remember?”

What does she mean, what does he remember? “I’m in…my house, why the fuck am I in my house, and I’m with Jake, and what are you talking about, what pack?”

“Jake, can you hear me?” Jake nods, and when Stiles passes that along to Lydia, she says, “Okay, so here’s the deal.”

\--

Jake won’t look at him.

It’s not like this fucking situation wasn’t bad enough, because apparently Scott and everyone are missing, but now Stiles’s wet dream freaking Jake out enough that he won’t even look at him, and isn’t that just fucking fantastic. And Stiles needs to fix that before they can go be productive, because if he’s forgetting, he can’t do this without Jake’s help.

“Look, I’m sorry.”

Jake looks up at him now, wide-eyed, cereal-laden spoon poised halfway to his mouth with milk dripping off of it into the bowl. “What?”

Stiles waves a hand, because wow, this is uncomfortable. “About the whole, you know, wanting to fuck you in my sleep or whatever. It’s just because we were sharing a bed, and I really didn’t mean to put you in that position, and I get that you’re probably pissed at me, but I really need your help with this, so…I’m sorry.”

Jake groans, then puts the spoon down and drops his head in his hands. “No, it’s not your—I was fondling you and talking about all of that denning stuff and shit, and I told you I wasn’t going to molest you but that was a pretty serious violation of your trust, and so I’m the one who’s sorry. And, uh—” He looks up now, just for a second, then drops his head back down. “Fuck. Yeah. You weren’t actually dreaming about me.”

What? “What do you mean?”

One shoulder raises, the falls. “I mean you were, uh—” He looks up at Stiles again, and he looks kind of awful. “It was Derek. You were saying—uh, moaning—Derek’s name.”

“Fuck.” Now Stiles is the one who wants to hide. “I’d finally gotten myself to stop doing that.” And now this is even more awkward. He had been having wet dreams about Derek basically since they had run into each other in the creepy-ass forest, because Derek is hot and unattainable, which seems to be basically where Stiles’s tastes run, but he had tried so damn hard to stop doing that because it felt creepy once he started actually knowing Derek as a person.

And now, apparently, while Derek is holed up in some warehouse somewhere, Stiles is dreaming about wanting a good lay. Fan-fucking-tastic.

“And now that this is suitably uncomfortable, want to go search creepy abandoned warehouses so we can stop thinking about it?”

Jake snorts. “Yeah, that sounds significantly more appealing at the moment.”

And the warehouses are seriously creepy, all weird fluttering plastic and abandoned mannequins and shit, and Stiles is seriously starting to expect an axe murderer to jump out at them and trying to kill them both, because they really are the stupid white people in horror movies who walk around abandoned buildings with flashlights because someone dared them to. Except they’re the ones looking for a killer, so they’re even worse than the horror movie cannon fodder, and wow, that really makes him feel great about his life choices.

And the problem—the bigger problem, the real problem—is that Stiles isn’t exactly sure what his life choices were beyond this. Because Jake seems to still remember things, seems to know what’s going on, and Stiles keeps asking him and keeps checking the writing on his arm, which is starting to smudge now (and what is he going to do when it’s gone, or when Jake forgets, except his friends [Scott and Derek and fuck he knows the rest of them] are probably going to be gone by then, and then he’s going to forget them and they’re going to be gone and he’s never going to remember them then) but a few words on his arm and the second-hand recounting of bits and pieces of the last few years of Stiles’s life don’t tell him what it was like, not really.

Not enough to remember it by, if this all goes bad.

And what if it doesn’t go bad, what if they get them back, but his memories don’t come back? What if he gets his friends back only to lose them because he can’t remember them, can’t remember becoming friends with him, can’t remember his life with them?

Though if that happens, at least they’ll still be alive, even if he doesn’t have them anymore. At least they’ll still be there.

And it feels like he’s getting closer, here in these warehouses, feels like there’s a hook in the middle of his chest, pulling him somewhere, and he can almost see the string, almost follow it. He just needs to keep looking, just needs to find that movement out of the corner of his eye that disappears when he looks at it head on and then it’ll lead him to Derek and everyone else.

Because the Nemeton wants him to find them, wants him to put the pack back together. He knows it, even when he isn’t sure why trusting the Nemeton is a bad idea, isn’t really sure what the Nemeton is. But he knows that the hook is made of wood and fireflies and pieces of a Go board with a game that they may have won but they also lost.

But the string isn’t there yet, and they _can’t find them_ , because they’re not between mannequins and skittering rats, aren’t hanging by their arms from exposed scaffolding and I-beams, and he _doesn’t know where they are_.

That night, it feels like he might throw up from frustration, blood slipping down his face as his nose bleeds and bleeds and won’t stop as he makes himself remember (Scott and Derek and Malia and Kira and Liam, Scott and Derek and Malia and Kira and Liam, Scott and Derek and Malia and Kira and Liam).

Jake looks at him with pity on his face. “Maybe we should stop.”

And then it hits him. Jake, perfect Jake, Jake with the tragic backstory that’s so relatable to the kid who lost a parent, gentlemanly Jake, Jake who isn’t forgetting, how did he not see this before?

“It’s you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: they are both mostly asleep and operating under a spell that affects their memory, nothing sexual happens but it could if something doesn't stop them.
> 
> We're going to pretend that this is sort of on time (so very sorry that it's not). But in exchange, it's longer than usual. I'm going to probably switch to posting about once a week because classes and my internship have now started.
> 
> There are two more chapters in Part Two, and then we're going to move on to Part Three, which will be much more Sterek-heavy.


	22. Chapter 22

Jake blinks at him in feigned confusion (and how did he ever think Jake was a bad liar, he’s fucking fantastic, because Stiles could never tell, and if he didn’t already know he still wouldn’t be able to), and Stiles edges towards his desk, where one of his jars of single-serve mountain ash is sitting. “What are you talking about?”

He’s going to have to be quick with this, because if he misses he isn’t going to get another chance, and then his friends are dead, his friends, his pack, his friends are going to be dead, so he can’t miss. So he snatches up the jar and throws it at the ground and thinks _circle_ and it forms (thank fuck, and he doesn’t even care that that shouldn’t have worked, not really, because thank _fuck_ ).

And Jake just keeps staring at him, still playing this game, still playing this fucking game, and Stiles is _done_. “What the hell are you doing?”

And Stiles stares back, because goddamn it he thought Jake was actually his friend, he thought that he might actually have a friendship not tainted by the cesspool that is Beacon Hills and the Nemeton, the beacon he turned on, and fuck everything. “Did you really think I wouldn’t figure it out? You, perfect you, perfect fucking you who is willing to let me wait until I’m ready and is okay with just being platonic and has the dead fucking parents so you can relate with me with my dead fucking parents, and you thought I would just believe that and let you keep leading me around by my nose like an idiot?”

“Stiles—” Jake looks so genuine that it makes Stiles sick, because nobody should be this believable.

“Was any of it real?” Something twitches in Jake’s jaw, and there, there it is, there’s what he’s been hiding so well. “Was all of this some giant fucked up plan from the beginning, from when I got to school, and you’ve been pulling the strings the whole time, or did you just stick the memories in my when you needed to, make me believe that it was all you being my friend when really it wasn’t?”

“It was real, Stiles, it was—” He breaks off. “I mean—”

“Where are they?”

Jake blinks at him again, so fucking innocent Stiles feels like he’s going to suffocate, like he wants to break through the circle that’s holding Jake in (that Jake isn’t fighting to break out of, and what does that mean, that a predator isn’t afraid of the trap they’re in) and shove mountain ash down his throat until he chokes on it, but he needs answers, needs his friends back more than he needs revenge. And besides, Jake will still be here when he gets back, and then he can make him fix this, make him let everyone remember again.

“What are you talking about?”

Stiles takes a step towards the circle, gets too close, and stops. He’s almost up against the edge of the circle now, chest heaving as he tries to keep from hyperventilating. “My friends. My pack. Where do you have them?”

“Nowhere.”

Something breaks inside of Stiles. “Stop fucking with me. _Stop fucking with me._ ” And then there’s a hook there, somewhere behind his sternum, and he _knows_. “I don’t need you. I’ll find them, and once I’m done I’m going to come back and kill you.”

The hook is pulling him now, and he doesn’t want to resist because what if he stops and it pulls out, what if it stops, what if he loses this, so he just starts grabbing mountain ash containers and stuffing them in his backpack, ignoring the pounding in his ribs and his head and Jake’s shouting (don’t go, stop, what do you think you’re doing, let me go, you’re going to get yourself killed, stop, stop, stop) then grabs his baseball bat (he’s a thousand years old and it’s a katana in his hand) and walks out of his room.

And he wants a gun (hates guns, hates the gun strapped to his father’s side, hates guns filled with wolfsbane and lead) but he can’t risk being caught outside with one, can’t risk being stopped, and besides, the person keeping them locked up is here, so he’s not going to need one. So he keeps walking, swiping Jake’s keys from the table and stealing his car, because his Jeep is a pile of metal somewhere (and he’s going to mourn for that once he makes sure he doesn’t have to mourn for anything else) and because fuck Jake.

Two minutes into wherever the fuck he’s driving to (wherever the hook is pulling him to), he calls Lydia. She picks up on the first ring.

“Stiles? Are you okay?”

“It was Jake.” Saying it aloud makes it more real, somehow, and it’s like a hole in his chest, somewhere above the hook. “He’s not real. It was Jake.”

“Are you okay?” She sounds frantic now, and it’s weird, because he feels almost calm beneath the hyperventilating and the fear and the pounding heart. Like that’s just a layer above his skin, and he’s underneath, a ceramic shell with a hook in the middle.

“He’s in a circle in my room. I know where they are.”

“What are you—I’ll be there in three hours.”

That’s not enough time, and besides, he’s going now, the hook is there and he’s going, and he can’t wait for her, doesn’t need to wait for her. “Don’t—it’s okay. I’m going to get them back. It’s—I’m going to get them back, Lydia, I’m going to get our friends back, I’m going to get our pack, I know where they are, but I just—if I don’t, if something happens, if something, if something—”

“Stiles—”

The words are coming out faster now, and he can’t breathe, but that’s the outside layer, and inside him is fine, inside him is okay, inside him has a hook that knows where his friends are, and that’s all that matters. "If I don’t do it, or if I fuck up, or if I can’t remember, or if they’re dead, God Lydia if they’re dead, they can’t be dead, I need you to get me out of here, I need you to get me out of Beacon Hills, and you can’t let me come back, because I can’t lose them, not them, and so you have to get me out of here and make me remember.”

“Wait for me, please,” and it sounds like she’s crying, but Lydia doesn’t cry. “Please, Stiles, don’t—I don’t care if you got him, you don’t know what he did to the place, you don’t know what traps there are, don’t go alone.”

“I don’t have _time_ , because I know where they are, I know, but if I wait I’m going to lose it, and then I’m never going to find them, so I have to go now.”

“Then tell me where they are. Give me the address, and I’ll come find you, come find them.”

Hysteria bubbles up in him. “I can’t. I don’t—I don’t have an address, Lydia, I have a hook, I have the Nemeton and a hook.”

“Stiles—”

“I have to go.” He swallows. “I have to go. If this doesn’t work, if I don’t—I’m sorry. In case I don’t remember to tell you later, in case I can’t remember to tell you later, I’m sorry.” And then he hangs up, because he can’t listen to what sounds like Lydia crying. Because Lydia never cries.

He’s going towards the edge of town now, and he’s near Deaton’s place, near enough that he could stop by without losing too much time. And if he stops remembering, he might forget Deaton too, which means he needs to say goodbye. Because he knows what it’s like to have people not say goodbye, and he doesn’t want to do that to someone, even if they don’t remember it.

So he turns into Deaton’s parking lot, even as the hook pulls him in the other direction (keep going, keep going, what are you doing, don’t stop) and gets out of Jake’s car, pressing his palm to the center of his chest  like that’ll keep the hook from slipping out. There are a couple of other cars there, but one of them is Deaton’s and the other looks like it has a girl talking very expressively to either an unseen pet or herself, which means that Deaton might be alone.

And he is, working on some paperwork in the front room, and he looks up when Stiles walks in. “Hello. Is there something I can help you with? Did you drop off a pet earlier?”

He doesn’t remember.

That hurts, somehow, that his only ally left in the town doesn’t remember him, but it’s also good, because it means that he won’t try to stop him, won’t mourn him if he has to leave. And he feels like Martha Jones after the whole world resets, when she’s the only one who remembers, and she walks up to the women who betrayed her and hands her flowers and says that she forgives her.

“I, uh—no.” He chews on the pad of his thumb, then forces it away from his mouth and down to his side. “No. I just—you don’t remember me, and that’s okay, it’s okay that you don’t remember me, but I—I wanted to say thank you, and goodbye, because I might not get a chance to do that later, and you’re not going to remember this conversation, but that’s okay, because this is really probably more for me than for you.”

Deaton takes a few steps towards him, looking understandably confused, though he stays behind the closed gate, which mean if Stiles was supernatural, he wouldn’t be able to get in.  “What are you here for?”

“I just—I just—I’m Stiles, uh, by the way, and you know me, or you did, but you’re forgetting things, we’re all forgetting things, so—so thank you for helping me when you could remember, and sometimes when you couldn’t, and if this doesn’t go well, uh, bye.” He turns to go, then stops. “If I make myself bleed, will it help me remember?”

Deaton stares for a moment (too long, too long, the hook is pulling in his chest) and then he does something that’s almost a smile, but sad. “It is not the bleeding, but the act of letting the blood fall. Be safe, Mr. Stilinski. I can’t remember what you’re fighting for, but be safe.”

And then Stiles does turn and go (too long, too long, he can’t delay anymore), getting back into Jake’s car and driving again. And as he goes, he wonders if he should call Lydia.

But he doesn’t need to say goodbye to her, because as long as he’s still alive, he’s still going to remember her, so it should be fine. So he keeps driving, fast enough that the hook won’t pull away, that he won’t lose that thread connecting him to the pack (Derek).

He slows to take a turn

and he’s chained up by his arms

and there’s a honk as he veers into the other lane

as water is poured down his throat and he chokes

and he has to keep going (he’s almost there, he’s almost there, just a little bit more and then the hook will fall away and he will see his friends again, his friends whose faces he can’t remember [blue eyes and red and orange] and whose names won’t fall off the tip of his tongue [tasting of sour candy and Thanksgiving dinner]).

And then he’s there, at the warehouse, without really any sort of memory of actually getting there in any physical sense, and the hook is tugging harder now, pulling, scratching through the inside of his sternum, and he finds himself running towards the building, stumbling over his feet, baseball bat in hand and backpack slung over one shoulder.

And maybe he locked Jake’s car, or at least there are keys in his pocket, and things aren’t really tracking beyond the hook (and pack and hope and his friends are here and he needs to get to them before the hook tears its way out of his chest).

Using the baseball bat as a lever, he breaks off the chain around the door to the warehouse, then shoves the door open and stumbles in. And stops.

The room is big and open, gray on gray with exposed rebar crossed across the ceiling with circular lights hanging down at regular intervals. And hanging at similar regular intervals, with chains looped up around the rebar, are five teenagers, strung up by their arms, feet just barely resting on the floor.

And Stiles can’t tell if they’re alive.

He races over to the first one (Derek, it’s Derek, and the hook slips from his chest but it’s okay because he doesn’t need it anymore) and starts trying to figure out how the hell to get him down; his baseball bat falls to the ground, clattering, but he doesn’t care.

“Derek.” Nothing. “Derek, Derek, fuck, fuck, please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead,” and his hands are slipping off of the chains as he tries to unwrap them from Derek’s wrists, and then Derek’s eyes open and Stiles stops breathing for a second. “Thank God. Oh, thank God. Jesus fuck. I know who you are. Thank God.”

Derek blinks at him. “What are you doing here?” His voice is harsh, like he hasn’t said anything for days (or like he’s been screaming, and Stiles doesn’t want to think about that).

“What do think I’m doing here? Jesus, these are really hard to get off, what the fuck. Once I get you guys out of here, I’m not sure how I’m going to let you out of my sight.”

“Stiles.”

Right. Yes. Probably not the time for announcements of creepy possessiveness. And ha, one hand is free. Now he just needs to get the other one out. “Sorry. Yes. Getting you out, and then we’re going to get everyone else—”

“Stiles.” His voice is more urgent now, and Stiles starts actually listening, because what? “Behind you.”

Stiles spins, his backpack almost whacking Derek in the ribs, and across the room from him is a tall blond man, hands at his sides, an almost-smile on his face. And all he can say, stupidly, is, “You’re not Jake.”

The man’s smile grows. “That alpha that’s been following you around like an overgrown lovesick puppy? Not quite.”

Shit. Motherfucking shit, he fucked up. “Derek. Derek, I need you to open up my backpack and get one of the jars out for me. Now.”

There’s a rummaging feeling in his backpack behind him as the man walks towards him in slow, measured steps, and his heart thunders in his throat, and all of his friends are strung up around the room, and he’s going to die.

He really doesn’t want to die.

The man stops maybe twenty feet from Stiles, just as Derek presses a jar of mountain ash into Stiles’s hand, and he _keeps smiling_. “You think I’m afraid of your little jar of dirt?”

Stiles is reminded, hysterically, of his thought when he trapped Jake, that what did it mean when a predator wasn’t afraid of the trap it was caught in. But he has no choice, has no other option (is so unprepared because he thought he had found the person, thought he had it all figured out) so he throws the jar (thank you to when he used to play fetch with Scott to fuck with him) and thinks _circle circle circle please God make a circle or I’m going to die_ and then it shatters and spreads until it’s a complete circle around the man (mage, oh God he’s a mage, and Stiles is going to die).

The mage blinks at the circle for a second, looking vaguely amused, then says, “Huh.” And then he looks up at Stiles with something between greed and lust across his bizarrely delicate features. “I was thinking of just killing you and being done with it, but a severance of six is better than a severance of five, and I can taste the Nemeton on you, so I think I’ll keep you around for the time being.”

And then he waves his hand and Stiles

\--

Blinks.

Huh. This isn’t his dorm room, or any of his classrooms, and he’s been in parties in warehouses this skeevy, but it doesn’t look remotely set up for a party, and there’s basically nobody there except that one random Scandanavian guy staring at him from inside a dirt circle.

“Do you know where we are?” Because he’s going to need to figure out how the hell to get back to civilization from whatever weird warehouse he’s in. “Also, the time? And the day? Because I probably need to get to class. Also sorry if you’ve given me your name before or whatever, but I think I’m kind of sleep deprived at the moment, because I have literally no memory of what it is. And that’s more information than you, random stranger, need, so…yeah. Going to stop talking now.”

The man smiles (and wow, that’s way creepier than it should be, but something about him just makes all of Stiles’s hair stand on end) and steps out of the dirt circle, and there’s a choking noise from behind Stiles that’s really fucking startling because he legitimately didn’t realize that there was anybody else in the room.

“Stiles.” A hand touches the back of his neck, sharp nails against his skin, and he flinches. “Stiles. Please. You need to remember.”

Remember what? He doesn’t know precisely what’s going on at this very moment, or how he got there, but he might have gotten drunk or…something, and that’s not the most alarming thing that’s ever happened to him. There was that time that he and Scott snuck into the Preserve to try to find half of a dead body, and then Scott had an asthma attack and never spoke to him again. But he’s not going to think about that.

Also, the hand on the back of his neck is making it really fucking difficult to turn around and figure out who’s behind him, but finally he wrenches away and spins (even though he doesn’t like having the Scandinavian at his back, and he doesn’t know why, but it’s scaring the hell out of him) to see a hot fucked-up-looking guy strung up by one arm from the ceiling, along with four other (unconscious) people, which is super alarming because what the fuck, is this some sort of serial killer thing, is the Scandinavian a serial killer, why isn’t he dead yet?

He wants to say something reassuring or clever or not-scared to the guy strung up from the fucking ceiling, but what comes out is, “Who are you?”

The guy looks somehow even more fucked up, and wow, he has weird eyebrows, and then he says, “It’s me. It’s Derek. Fuck, come on Stilinski, get your head out of your ass and fight it, fight him.”

Stiles takes a step back from the guy, because holy shit he’s scary-looking, and he reaches out and grabs Stiles by the neck (which fuck, fuck, how is this guy that strong with one hand still attached to the ceiling by a chain, looking like death is a few steps behind him). He doesn’t squeeze, but still, fuck. “Get off me.”

The guy looks frantic now. “Come on, Stilinski, we can’t lose you, I can’t lose you, so you have to _remember_.”

He doesn’t know what the hell he’s supposed to remember, or what the hell is going on, and he doesn’t want to be between the person with his hand around his throat and the man who shouldn’t be scary but is. And he needs to get the other people down, too, and needs to get this guy down, and he doesn’t know what the fuck is going on, and all he should want to do is go home but he needs to fix this like it’s a second heart pulsing inside his chest.

Which means he needs to remember, needs to remember what he needs to remember, needs to remember if he needs to bleed for—

_It is not the bleeding, but the act of letting the blood fall._

He has no idea who said that to him, doesn’t even know if anyone said that to him or if he just read it in some book when he was going through his supernatural phase, but he needs to remember.

So he pulls a jar out of his backpack (because he has jars of dirt in his backpack, what the fuck?) and smashes it on the ground, ducking to pick up a piece of glass, and there’s a hand above him, reaching for him, and his body rolls out of the way without him telling it to, like it’s muscle memory that he doesn’t remember. He ends up with one knee up, hands outspread like he’s ready to hit the Scandinavian man, and then before he can think about it too hard (because he over thinks things and then does them anyway, unless they’re things that are good for him) he takes the piece of glass he’s gripping with too-tight hands and slices a cut on his wrist, as far away from the veins as he can get.

The man hanging from the ceiling makes an awful noise, and the Scandinavian man lunges towards him again, something more desperate on his face now, but Stiles jerks out of the way, blood dripping down from his arm as the second heart pulses in his chest, harder, harder, until it feels like it’s going to burst.

And then something snaps and he _remembers_ , Derek and Scott and motherfucker the mage is out of his circle, how the fuck did that happen, and Stiles rocks to the side again to pick up the baseball bat, standing and swinging it at the mage. It hits the mage in the side of the knee, lower than he was intending, but it buys him enough time to get up to Derek’s level, undoing the last of the metal chain holding him up so he drops to his feet, shoving Stiles behind him. Which is fucking insulting, because Stiles isn’t a child, and he can take care of himself.

“Get the others. I’ll hold him off.”

“Derek—”

“ _Go_.”

Stiles goes, because fuck if he has a choice, and he needs to get his friends, needs to save his friends, even if that means leaving Derek at risk, because he’s selfish like that. He gets to Kira next, and she starts to stir as he gets her first wrist out of the chains. Her wrists look rubbed raw, blood dotting her skin, and it’s amazing how different the healing is between werewolves and kitsune. Because they both look fucked to hell, but the stuff that heals easily, like cuts, are gone from Derek, or at least they were.

“Stiles?”

“Hey.” He forces a grin at her, trying to ignore the sounds of Derek’s snarls and bursts of sparks that he can taste on his tongue like metal and burning sugar. “You think you’re going to be able to stand once I get you down?”

“Probably.”

It’s the same way that Scott would say it, or would have before, which means it’s really a “probably not”. “Put your hands on my shoulders, because I almost—”

He gets the knot out, and she drops her hands down on his shoulders, her weight following as—

His shoulder explodes, and he’s screaming, _screaming_ (he hates guns) and he’s falling with Kira falling with him; she’s holding him up now, her hands clutching at her shoulders as one of them catches fire and burns. He struggles to get to his feet, one of his arms refusing to take his weight, and Kira helps prop him up, shaking underneath him. Or maybe he’s the one who’s shaking, and taking her along as he trembles.

The mage has one hand closed around Derek’s throat, holding him up and still with strength that he shouldn’t have (except Stiles doesn’t know what a mage can do, can’t remember if he does know, can’t remember the name of the person holding him up [Kira, Kira, it’s Kira]) with his other hand pointing a gun at the two of them.

“Did you think your little trap would hold me?” he asks, and his voice is terrible now, rust and acid and things burning long through the night with fires that won’t go out. “I am older than you can comprehend, have taken territories that were gone before this city was built. I can taste the Nemeton on my tongue without choking, and you think you can trap me with a little mountain ash and some belief?”

They need to get the rest of the pack, need to wake them up, but if they move, they will die. “How did you get out?” Stall, stall, figure out a way out. “I mean, it is still mountain ash and you are still supernatural, aren’t you?”

The mage’s hand flexes on Derek’s throat, casually, like he can squeeze the life out of Derek without even thinking about it. Which is not acceptable. Derek snarls at him, and then the sound cuts off, mouth still open. “To take territory, one must be able to hold it. And this here, that you are standing on, this is my territory. So do not think to dictate how magic will work on my territory.”

And then he waves his hand, and Stiles is lurched off his feet and goes flying, crashing into one of the pillars across the room. And oh look, his ribs are cracked again. Or maybe broken, given how hard breathing suddenly is. But he struggles to his feet, because he’s not going to lie down at someone’s feet.

“I thought you weren’t going to kill anyone until the new moon.”

“Nothing stopping me from doing it right here and now. And I think I’ll start with this one. Whiny little thing, isn’t he? Started moaning a name before. Wonder if it was yours.” His smile grows, and a long cut opens up across Derek’s cheekbone, blood flowing from it; Derek roars silently, limp in the mage’s grip.

The gun is pointed at Stiles now, and he can see Kira inching to the side, towards Scott. Good. As long as he can keep the mage’s attention on him, they might be okay. And if there’s anything Stiles is good at, it’s being distracting. “You know, it could be. That’s about when I connected to the Nemeton. You know, the giant freaky tree stump thing. It’s a hell of a thing, that tree, with the hell part meant literally. Like, scariest fucking tree I’ve ever seen, and it’s barely even a tree anymore. And seriously, older than I can comprehend? You have no idea what I can comprehend.” He swallows, forces the words out as Kira starts undoing the first of Scott’s chains. “I was a thousand years old, once. I can comprehend a lot.”

Something terrifyingly close to glee crosses the mage’s face. “You are the nogistune no youki. No wonder you taste of Nemeton. Perhaps I will save you for last, drag the remnants of that power out of you one piece at a time until it fills me and bursts. And you will feel every inch of it, as every drop of magic drains from you until you die.”

Holy fucking God. Stiles sways a little, though that’s more because of the blood loss that’s starting to get bad—and the fact that he can’t breathe for shit—than the image that’s running through his head. “I’ll pass, if it’s all the same to you.”

The mage tosses Derek to the side, where he twitches and lies still, eyes darting back and forth (thank God, because that means he’s still alive), then approaches, gun steady on Stiles. “You have been a thorn in my side for a week, asking questions, keeping this disaster of a pack attached to this territory. There’s no reason for you to be awake before I kill you.” And then he’s in front of Stiles, suddenly, gun lashing out to smash against Stiles’s temple.

Through the rushing in his head as things smear sideways, he thinks he hears a roar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's late but long, so yay. And there's one more chapter in Part 2, and then we're on to Part 3.
> 
> This was a really hard chapter to write, so I hope it's okay.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently this chapter, which also included the "hey I'm going on a brief hiatus" note, didn't get posted. Whoops. So anyway, here's the end of part 2, and I'll get the next chapter up...some time.

“Let’s play a game where I don’t get hurt for a year straight. Or even nine months. I would settle for nine months where Adderall is my biggest medical expense.”

Scott picks his head up from where it’s resting on Stiles’s good shoulder—or, rather, the non-shot one, because they’re both a bit of a mess—to stare balefully at him. “Let me tell you—we’d all like that.”

Stiles blinks at him, and he has enough pain medication in him that things are drifting sideways, not quite settling right. “Where’s my dad?” He knows his dad bad been there, before, but he can’t quite remember him leaving (remember, remember, glass on skin and blood).

“Getting coffee. My mom keeps trying to kick him out to sleep, but he won’t go.”

Right. Stiles remembers hearing the middle of one of those conversations, halfway to waking even as he drifted back to sleep. “My teachers are going to stop believing that I’ve been hospitalized. I don’t—are you okay? Did I ask you if you were okay?” His brain really isn’t working right now (but at least he remembers them, remembers the pack). “Is everyone else okay?”

“We’re all fine, and the whole town remembers us now. Lydia’s filled in what happened, and Isaac corroborated what he could. We freaked the hell out of him, apparently. He thought he was losing his pack.”

Stiles snorts, which is apparently a godawful idea with one broken and three cracked ribs. When he manages to stop wheezing (and wow, isn’t this a change from how it used to be). “Yeah, well, he wasn’t the only. Just because you’re a true alpha, it doesn’t mean the thing lurking in the shadows can’t kill you.”

“I know that.” He perks his head up, and a second later the door opens and his dad works in, coffee held in front of his face like he’ll stay awake from the scent alone.

He looks unshaven, haggard, and Stiles feels a wave of guilt at what he’s put him through. Again. Still. But his face lights up when he sees that Stiles is awake, and he hurries over to set his coffee down and give Stiles a careful hug. “You are never doing that again.” He pulls away just enough for Stiles to see his face, and Stiles’s non-shot arm isn’t strong enough to hold. “I’m serious, Stiles. You are never walking into an unknown situation without backup again.”

Stiles knows that he’s right, but “I didn’t have anyone to come with me.”

“Lydia was on her way,” Scott offers, the traitor.

“ _Anyway_.” This is not an argument he can win, which means it’s time to change the subject. “Where’s the rest of the pack?”

“Lydia’s at home, Liam is in the middle of fighting with his parents wanting him to never leave the house again, Kira’s arm was grazed by a bullet so she’s resting, Malia’s…nobody knows, Isaac is still in France, and Derek is in his apartment.”

Stiles’s dad blinks at him. “No he’s not. He’s camped out outside of the room.”

“For God’s—I told him to go home.”

“Probably doesn’t want to leave his alpha.” When Scott looks at him, he shrugs a shoulder. “You were just kidnapped. He probably wants to make sure he doesn’t lose you.”

Scott scowls. “I’m going to go order him home. Again.” And then he’s gone, and it’s just Stiles and his dad.

His dad sighs. “I owe you an apology. I’m part of the reason you had no backup.”

“What, because you couldn’t remember? It’s not like that’s your fault.” Stiles could barely remember half the time. It’s odd; he can remember not remembering. “No one could, and I started forgetting, too. I barely would have been able to be my own backup.”

“Not really making me feel any better.” He brushes some of Stiles’s too-long hair back from his face. “You’re not doing this again, Stiles. I know you love your friends, but nobody wants to lose you.”

“Or you could just get me some training.”

“Later. We don’t need to talk about this now, though. There’s plenty of time for me and everyone else to yell at you later. Just rest.”

Stiles does kind of want to continue the conversation, or have a conversation, or just talk, but his brain still isn’t working too well, so he falls asleep instead.

\--

There are two people in his room when he wakes up the next time, blurry against the sharp white of the hospital. Scott is in the chair next to him, head tipped back as he snores (something which didn’t go away with his asthma, and it’s really freaking annoying because he sounds like a chainsaw), and he looks exhausted even in his sleep. Which probably means that he hasn’t been sleeping, which probably has to do with some combination of having been kidnapped and his girlfriend and best friend having both been shot.

But that has nothing on how awful Derek looks, once Stiles’s vision resolves enough for him to see him. His eyes are open, though from the grayness of his face they probably shouldn’t be, and he’s staring unblinkingly at the two of them like he’s afraid they’ll disappear if he blinks.

“Derek?” In a shot, he’s up and to Stiles, standing on the other side of him in some bizarre parody of the last time he was in the hospital. Except now he just stares at Stiles, which is not particularly helpful. “What’s going on?”

Derek sinks down into the other chair, lips pressed together in a thin line, and wow, Stiles is really just not getting anything from him today. Fantastic. He really doesn’t have the energy to deal with this, and he’s not sure his eyes are even still open, so when everything goes away again, he’s not particularly surprised.

\--

It’s Scott with him later, because his dad is back at work, and they get through five games of Rummy 500 before Stiles thinks of something important.

“Is Jake—” Scott’s expression goes just shy of murderous, which, fantastic. “Is Jake okay? I assume you figured out he wasn’t the bad guy once he…wasn’t the bad guy.”

Scott nods. “He’s been staying at your house. It’s a little tense—none of us like having another alpha in the territory, especially right now, and he’s not particularly comfortable being here, so we’ve mostly been avoiding each other.”

Something hits Stiles. “Someone did let him out, right? Like out of the circle.”

“Yeah. Lydia let him out, though she almost killed him first. But he’s fine and out.” Scott doesn’t look particularly pleased about that, but that’s not really a surprise. Hooray for werewolf territorialism.

“I want to see him.” Because that is one massive apology he owes him.

“Stiles—”

“Scott.”

Scott stares at him for another few seconds, then nods. “Right. Fine. I’ll ask Lydia if she can bring him over.”

Jake and Lydia snow up half an hour later, and Scott leaves with minimal eye-flashing and only a faint growl. Which, hey, progress.

And then it’s just Stiles and Jake and Lydia, the last of whom leans down to plant a kiss on his forehead. “I’ll leave you two to talk.” And then she saunters out of the room, and then there are two.

“So.”

Jake stays where he is, halfway across the room from him. “You have lipstick on your forehead.”

Right. Stiles isn’t sure whether he wants to wipe it off or savor it because holy shit Lydia kissed his forehead, so he settles for rubbing his hand against it. And hey, now he has her lipstick on his hand instead. “Better?”

“Yeah.”

And then they’re just…quiet. Which is awkward. Fuck. “Look, just…sit down. Or something. Please.” Jake sits. “I’m—I’m really sorry. About everything. The dragging you here and the going kind of crazy and the ashing you—is that a verb, ashing?—in my room. And stealing your car. Because I stole your car. Sorry.”

Jake stares at him for a minute, then sighs. “I’m—I’m not going to say it’s all okay, because it’s not, but we’re both still here, and I’ll be furious as you for being a _fucking moron_ once you’re healed enough to defend yourself. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m _livid_ , but I’m just not going to yell you right now.”

That’s better than Stiles expected. “Okay.” Maybe he didn’t totally ruin that friendship. Maybe.

“I just need to—” Jake bites off what he’s saying, something like deeply suppressed rage flashing across his face. “I just need to ask—what made you think it was me? You were kind of incoherent when you were ranting at me about it.”

Right. That makes sense. “I—what I was—this is going to sound stupid. "

"You literally imprisoned me in your bedroom. I think I deserve an answer. "

"Right. So...so I looked at you and thought, nobody could be that perfect. Nobody could be that close to what I want and not be manufactured or lying. "

Jake looks like he wants to say something, and then he visibly clamps down on it and asks instead, "So you decided, what, this guy is a traitor so instead of backup I'm just going to rush on by myself? You're going to get yourself killed, or someone else, or both. "

Stiles's temper flares. "You can say whatever you want about my decision to lock you in my room, or about what a shitty friend I've been to you, and you'd be justified, but don't you dare judge me for the choices I made to save my friends."

"Stiles--"

"Your eyes would be gold if you weren't an alpha, wouldn't they be?" Jake looks confused but nods anyway. "See, in Beacon Hills, we don't have that luxury, to be pure as the driven snow and so fucking wholesome. I've killed. We all have. And I would do it again if it meant saving my friends. So don't you dare judge me.”

Jake stares at him for another minute, then starts and spins when the door opens behind him and Parrish walks in. And holy shit, it’s surprisingly good to see him, to know that he’s okay, because Stiles had been pretty sure he wasn’t gone—and had honestly just stopped thinking about him—but it’s always good to get confirmation.

He’s in his deputy uniform, which is pretty much SOP, and he looks police-y. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to speak to Mr. Stilinski alone.”

Jake nods vaguely towards him, then takes a good look at him and does a double-take. “What the hell are you?”

Parrish grins, a baring of teeth. “Trade secret. Excuse me.”

Jake looks at Stiles again, then nods. “I’m heading back to school. I’ll see you when you get there.” And then he heads out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Parrish takes a seat next to him, pulling out a notepad.

“I need to get your official report about what happened that resulted in you getting shot.”

Oh, fuck. Fucking son of a bitch. He has no idea how to answer that question, or if what he’s going to say will match what the rest of them said, and that could be a problem. Even with Parrish knowing what he knows, he’s still a cop, and that means he doesn’t like lies on police reports.

Parrish watches him for a minute, then smiles. “Why don’t I tell you what has been reported to me, and you can confirm what happened. Just to be sure we know what we’re talking about.”

Thank God for Parrish. “Okay. Yeah, I can—okay.”

Parrish nods. “Here are the facts that have been provided to me: A few days ago, a man kidnapped Derek Hale, Scott McCall, Kira Yukimura, Liam Dunbar, and Malia Tate and chained them up in a warehouse just outside the city. He kept them sedated to control them and wrote texts to their friends and family to convince them that each of them had independently left town. His plan was to kill them on the night of the black moon for some sort of supernatural ritual.

“You returned to town with your new friend when you became suspicious of their absence. You located the warehouse and, after locking your new friend in your bedroom to protect him, stormed it and began freeing your friends. You were shot in the process, and then the kidnapper was torn apart by a...” He grimaces at his paper. “Bear.”

Wow, that’s barely even attempting a cover-up. “That sounds about right.”

“Nothing to add?”

“It was an angry bear.”

Parrish laughs under his breath. “I’ll make sure that gets into the report. Along with the fact that the bear has left town, so we don’t need to look for it. Are you okay?”

Stiles nods. “Yeah, I’m—I’m okay. I’ll be better, but I’m okay.”

“Have the nightmares started yet?”

Stiles would be offended by that, but he know how it works, has been around this rodeo too many times before. “I’ve been too drugged up for it, so far. But my roommate back at school is a werewolf and part of my ‘new friend’s pack, so he won’t be surprised if I start waking up screaming.”

Parrish’s lips tighten. “You sound like how I did, when I got back. I know that you’re all old enough to have served in the military, but at least then you’d be trained to deal with this.”

“Does it help?” His eyebrows go up. “The training, I mean. Does it help it not suck so much?”

“Sometimes.” He taps the pen on his notepad. “Sometimes it doesn’t do a damn thing. But if you need to talk, you can talk to me.”

“I think I’ll pass, smoky, but thanks.”

Parrish reaches out and ruffles Stiles’s hair, then stands. “Feel better.”

“Thanks.” He doesn’t know when that’ll happen, but soon, maybe, he’ll be okay.

END OF PART TWO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo end of Part Two. Part Three will be really Sterek-y, so for all of you who have been waiting for it, it will come. I promise.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for panic attacks, which will be a general warning for basically all of the rest of part Three.

PART THREE

* * *

 

The third morning in a row Stiles wakes up screaming, he calls Danny.

It takes four rings, long enough for the panic to start in Stiles’s throat (maybe he’s not there, maybe he’s gone, maybe Stiles has lost him and just doesn’t remember), and then Danny picks up with a groan. “Oh, God? What do you want?”

“I need an alarm clock that can tell me the time, my current location, and that everyone in the pack is safe, listed by name.”

There’s a long pause, and then Danny says, “Jesus, Stiles. Okay, I’ll—no, no, you don’t need to get up, I’ll be back. Just a second.” There’s a pause as he—Stiles assumes—walks into another room, and then he says, “Okay, I’m back. Are you going to need it to sound like a real person? Like the AI from Iron Man?”

“JARVIS.” Stiles shakes his head, even though Danny can’t see him. “No, no, it just needs to be out loud. And I need it to go off if I wake up, too, not just whenever it’s set for.”

There’s the sound of typing, and then Danny asks, “What about the order? Do you have a specific order that you need the names to be in?”

“Scott first.”

Danny snorts. “Of course. Is this because of Cousin Miguel?”

Stiles laughs for what feels like the first time in almost two weeks. “Tangentially, though for once it’s not his fault. But, uh…I got shot. Along with some other issues.”

“Of course you did.” Danny sighs. “It makes me glad to have gotten out. I mean, I love you guys, but you’re all nuts. Can you wait a few days before I get this to you?”

“Yeah, it’s not like I can sleep much worse.” Though he probably shouldn’t tempt that by saying it aloud. “Thank you for this. Really. I’ll send you a stuffed animal or a sex toy or something.”

“Your gratitude and not getting shot again is all I need at the moment. I’ll figure out what you owe me later. And what do you mean by ‘some other issues?’”

“Uh.” His ribs twinge, partly as a product of jolting out of bed (which, really, ow), and he presses a hand to his side. “Concussion and a few broken ribs. A couple. I’m fine.”

“You really sound like it. You really are fucking crazy, you know that, right?”

“Thanks.” Stiles sighs; he’s exhausted. “Thank you. Really. I just can’t—I can’t keep waking up and not knowing where I am, not knowing if they’re dead and I just—I just forgot.”

Danny is typing again. “It sounds like a bit more than just a concussion, some broken ribs, and a gunshot sounds. And the fact that I know that is terrifying.”

“Things got not super fun here for a little while, but they’re good now. Mostly good. Look, I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“You guys never do.” But he doesn’t sound as bitter as Stiles would have expected. “I’ll get it to you when I can; I don’t have that much other work right now, so it shouldn’t be too long.”

Stiles lets the silence hang for a second, and then he asks, “How’s MIT?”

Danny laughs. “I haven’t slept for more than five hours at a time in almost a month, so let’s hold off this conversation until it’s not six o’clock in the morning.”

People sleep five hours at a time. Huh. Stiles had almost forgotten that. “I’ll let you go. Thank you.”

Danny hangs up, and Stiles slumps down against the wall and tries to breathe through the pain.

\--

Derek meets him in front of his house the day he’s supposed to head out, leaning against the wall of the house with his arms crossed across his chest, looking as grumpy as always. And fucked up, too, almost as bad as Stiles feels, though he’s not surprised. Derek has gone through enough, and he always seems to be missing a little bit more after each time.

Stiles hoists his backpack a little bit higher on his non-shot shoulder, which knocks it against his ribs and makes them feel like he just got shot again (not really, but still, ow). “What’s up?”

“I’m giving you a ride to school.”

A couple hours in a car with Derek. Ugh. “I can get there on my own. There are buses, you know.”

Derek’s miserable-but-kind-of-weird expression doesn’t change. “Scott’s orders.”

“I’m surprised he’s willing to let you out of the territory.”

Derek shakes his head and starts towards the car like he’s just expecting Stiles to follow. Which, okay, he is following, but that’s just so he can hear what Derek’s saying, not because he actually wants to follow Derek. “He’s even less willing to let you out of the territory, but if you’re going, he wants someone with you. Not that I can stay, but there is an alpha who has shown his willingness to keep you safe.”

“I’m not a child,” he snaps, even as he gets into the passenger door of Derek’s car.

Derek rolls his eyes. “You were shot. Get over yourself.” And then he starts driving.

It’s a weird car ride, because Derek doesn’t talk, and Stiles is in a little too much pain to babble, so they’re just quiet. And grumpy. Because funny enough, but pain puts him in a bad mood.

Derek drives like the road’s trying to run away from him, though, so it doesn’t take all that long to get there, the trees rushing by in one big blur that Stiles doesn’t bother to try to get to focus. Everything feels distant behind the pain, like he’s somehow disconnected from his body even as he fights to keep breathing through the agony.

He doesn’t have a text from Jake this time; he hasn’t talked to him in a couple days, and he’s not sure if Jake will ever want to speak to him again. And honestly, he wouldn’t blame him if he doesn’t. But Derek just parks in a temporary spot under the dorm then grabs Stiles’s backpack before he can even reach for it.

They take the elevator because Stiles doesn’t even particularly want to look at stairs at the moment, and Derek keeps up his silent unhappy routine, which for once Stiles is okay with because he doesn’t want to talk. He doesn’t want to think. He doesn’t even really want to do his homework, though he’s been keeping up because he missed so much class and he can’t afford to fall that behind. Not like the mess that was high school; he’s not doing that again.

Sun is standing across the room when Stiles opens the door, and even from the entryway Stiles can see that his entire body is trembling. And then, after a second, something breaks, and he starts babbling, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, you smell like so much pain and Jake smells like so much anxiety, and you look goddawful.”

Stiles scrubs his hand across his face. “Hi, Sun.” He takes a couple of steps inside, Derek following, and Sun freezes, eyes flashing. “What are you doing here?”

Derek stops behind Stiles, so close that he can feel the warmth of his body, because werewolves are basically fluffy angry space heaters. “I have permission from your alpha. I’m just dropping Stiles off.”

He’s weirdly submissive-sounding, but the whole day has been like that, so Stiles just doesn’t have the energy to care. Sun stays puffed up for a second, then relaxes, eyes fading back to their normal non-glowing status. “Elizabeth, I’m assuming, not Jake.”

Derek doesn’t respond, which is pretty much a response on its own. “How is Jake?”

Sun grimaces. “He’s not thrilled. Are you sure you’re ready to be back at school?”

Stiles shakes his head. “It’s not like I really have a choice, and I’m not going to get any better sitting around my house, so….” He turns around to look at Derek, who is closer than he expected. “Okay, hello. Thanks for the ride. You can tell Scott you’ve done your job.”

Derek blinks at him, then walks over and drops the backpack on Stiles’s bed, then walks out of the room, closing the door behind him. Because that wasn’t really freaking weird.

Stiles stands where he is for a minute, then turns around. “I have to go talk to the RA.”

“What’s up?”

He really doesn’t want to explain to him right now, so he just shakes his head and walks out.

The RA has her door open, and Stiles knocks and then stays where he is as she tears her earbuds out of her ears, turns, and stares at him with an open-mouth gape. “Jesus Christ, you look like you were hit by a car.”

He kind of feels like it at the moment. “I was in a car accident, but this is from, uh…” He gestures with his good hand at his shoulder, which is stiff with bandages. “I got shot.”

Her eyebrows fly up to nearly disappear under her bangs. “Holy fuck. Okay. I’m assuming that’s why you haven’t been around. And, I mean, I knew about the car accident, but…wow, okay. Is there something I can—do you need to talk to someone about it or something?”

Probably, but there’s no way that person is going to be her. “It’s more of a thing where…look, I’m probably going to wake up screaming at least a couple of times.” And by a couple he means like a dozen, even with Danny’s alarm clock. “And I don’t know if there’s some kind of form I can submit or something, but I’d really like to not be written up on noise violations.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“You can also assume that nobody’s being murdered. If you hear screaming, I mean. Though you’re far enough away that you might now. I’m not actually sure how loud I am.”

She looks even more horrified than she did before, which is kind of sad, because he’s not even talking about having been shot anymore. “Can you—what happened? Like, were you mugged or something?”

“No, and I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Right.” She nods. “Yeah, I understand that. Well, I don’t really, but…yeah. If you need anything else, you can stop by, or I can give you the information for some on-campus resources, or—”

“I’m good, thanks.” He needs another pain pill, even though he’s not a huge fan of feeling even fuzzier, so he nods to her. “I have to go.”

She obviously wants to say something else, but he doesn’t really care, so he just turns and walks away.

\--

It’s hard to get back to doing his homework in his room with Sun there instead of Jake, his arm and his ribs and his head pounding, where all he wants to do is make sure that his friends are okay. And he knows they are, knows that they’re fine and safe and alive, knows because he can see green next to their names on Skype and because he _knows it_ , but he has to resist the urge to call them just to hear their voices, the need like an itch in the back of his head.

He’s so busy trying not to think about calling his friends that when his phone ring he nearly jumps out of his chair, heart pounding as he fumbles for his phone. “Hello?”

“Hi.”

It’s Scott, and something settles inside of him, deep inside his stomach. “Hi.” He lets himself breathe. “Okay. What do you need?”

“Just wanted to make sure you got in okay.”

Something a little like panic hits, and goddamn it, isn’t he supposed to be done with this? “Wait, has Derek not gotten back yet? He left hours ago.”

There’s a pause. “Derek?”

“He said you told him to give me a ride.” He knows that happens. He remembers that happening. There was no other way it could have happened, physical, because he didn’t take a bus, and so it must have happened.

Right?

Scott makes a weird noise. “I didn’t ask him to.”

His breath catches, and he knows somewhere in that disconnected part of his brain that he’s way too close to hyperventilating, but he just—he can’t—

“Hey.” A hand lands on his good shoulder, and he lashes out, because he’s there, he’s in the warehouse, and the mage is touching him, and he needs to stop him, he needs to stop him, he needs to—

“It’s six forty-seven, and you’re in your dorm room.” That’s Scott, except Scott was unconscious in the warehouse, except Scott killed the mage, the mage is dead, and he’s in his dorm room, and that’s Sun, and he needs to breathe before he breaks his ribs again.

So he breathes, and asks, “Scott?”

Scott’s voice comes through the phone smashed up against his ear. “I’m here, I’m real, you got us all out. I’m having Kira call Derek and find out what happened, but you’re remembering right, your memories are right, we’re fine, we’re out.”

Sun is standing in front of him (why couldn’t he see him before?), and he extends out a hand to Stiles. “Here, touch, so you know I’m real.”

It takes Stiles a second to get the thought to process from his brain to his arm, and then he reaches out and grabs Sun’s wrist, just holding on, because he needs to know that there’s someone in the room with him, that someone else is real.

And then he just sits there and breathes and tries not to scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooray for the start of Part Three!
> 
> This chapter was really short, sorry, but the next chapter should be quite a bit longer. Also I hope that clears up some of the questions from before about what happened in the warehouse/who killed the mage.
> 
> My hope is to have the next chapter up by next Friday (11/20), but we will see. (Also, I have my first jiu jutsu belt test on Wednesday, so wish me luck.)


	25. Chapter 25

Mr. Gold takes one look at Stiles when as he walks into the classroom with his backpack over his good shoulder (which does very little in the way of making it hurt less) and says, “Talk to me after class.”

Stiles nods and heads to his seat, trying to ignore the looks from the people around him. He looks awful. He knows it. He doesn’t want to do the whole ‘wow, what happened to you’ thing, because that gets really old, really fast, so he just puts his head down and pulls out his laptop and starts taking notes.

Even with those notes, he couldn’t have answered a single question about what they actually talked about during the class. Terrorism, definitely, and maybe something about China, but it’s all just kind of a wash of pain and exhaustion and really wanting to sleep but not wanting to wake up, and most of what keeps him going is the note that pops up on his computer every ten minutes reminding him that the pack is safe, they’re alive, they’re all okay.

Because he knows, he really knows, but there’s always that chance that maybe he doesn’t, that maybe his brain is lying to him, but the note is right, and so he knows.

He heads up to the front of the room and drops the backpack on a front desk because there’s nowhere he’s going to be able to keep it on his shoulder at the moment. People are still filtering out of the room, and Mr. Gold stands across from Stiles and watches them go, fingers drumming on his leg. Stiles would say something, but the fact that Mr. Gold hasn’t said anything yet, that’s a weird sign. And he’s really not up for interpreting right now.

Finally, the last person is gone, and Mr. Gold leans back against the desk and crosses his arms across his chest. “If trouble starts heading our way, I’d appreciate a heads up. Professional courtesy and all that.”

That’s not what he expected to hear. “What?”

Mr. Gold gestures with his chin towards Stiles’s shoulder. “You got that up in Beacon Hills, right? I didn’t make the connection when you wrote it on your intro form—there are normal people living there—but when someone from there comes back looking like how you look, it’s not usually because of anything human.”

Stiles’s entire body freezes up at that, which, ow, he really needs to give his ribs a break. “What are you talking about?”

“You look human, and you act human, so I’m guessing you’re not a werewolf or whatever else is hanging around that pack these days, foxes or whatever the hell they are.”

Stiles takes in a deep breath, or a deep a breath as he can take without his ribs trying to impale him, then says, “This would be a really awkward conversation if I actually didn’t know what you were talking about. I’m part of the McCall pack up in Beacon Hills; I’m their resident human. The trouble that was there isn’t going to follow us here, don’t worry. It’s, uh—he’s dead.”

“Rogue?”

Stiles shakes his head. “I think I’m looking for a little quid pro quo right now; I’d rather you give me something before I give you everything.”

Mr. Gold stares at him for a second, then laughs shortly. “I guess I can’t blame you. I’m druid-trained; I’ve worked with Druid Deaton. Obviously I chose a different path, but I keep track of what’s going on. Not much other choice, because we both know things can go bad quick. So what was the trouble?”

“A mage.”

He stiffens, going sheet white, then drags a hand across his mouth. “Jesus Christ. There was a mage less than a hundred miles from here? How the hell did you—how the hell is it not a problem anymore? How are they not coming after you?”

“They—the Alpha, my Alpha, my best friend, he killed him. Ripped him to shreds. He was…pissed.”

Mr. Gold looks away, and there’s something on his face that Stiles feels like he’s seen before, and he’s never known if it was fear or something else. “I would still appreciate the courtesy, if something else starts coming this way. I want to be able to secure myself, my life. This school.”

“I’m not going to let anything happen to the school, and besides, there’s like half a pack here. Well like half of my size of pack. Their pack is fucking huge. I think. It’s actually really hard to tell how big their—anyway. Never mind. Yeah, I’ll let you know if anything shows up. But it shouldn’t.” Stiles starts to pick up his backpack, realizes that’s not going to work with him behind him, and turns. “Look, I should go. You want me to tell Deaton you say hi?”

“Probably better not.”

Huh. Whatever. “Okay. See you in a couple days.”

“Feel better soon, Mr. Stilinski.”

Yeah, right. “Thanks.”

\--

“ _—six-oh-four am, and you are in Ellis-Bryant Hall at Northern California University. Scott McCall is safe. Derek Hale is safe. Lydia Martin is safe. Isaac Lahey is safe. Malia Tate is safe. Kira Yukimura is safe. Liam Dunbar is safe.”_

Stiles shoves his back up against the wall next to his bed, shoving his fist in his mouth to keep from screaming as he shakes. They’re safe. They’re safe. They’re safe.

A noise slips out, and Sun jolts upright, looking around wildly before focusing on him in the semi-dark. “Stiles?”

Stiles sucks in a deep breath, then forces himself to pull his fist out (ow, ow, ow) to say, “I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”

Sun blinks at him, then falls back down against the pillow. “Fuck, what time is it?”

“Six-oh-four, apparently.” He picks up his phone and manages to hit the on button on the second try. “Six-oh-five. Whatever.” They’re safe. They’re safe. He can’t just call them and make sure, because it’s six-oh-five in the morning. Except on the East Coast. And in France. But no. They’re safe. They’re safe.

He hears Sun sigh and looks over to see him throw an arm over his eyes. “Have you talked to Jake since you got back? Because he’s getting pissy.”

Stiles shoves his back a little harder against the wall because he feels _vulnerable_. “I don’t think Jake wants to talk to me right now.”

“I think you put yourself in danger and kept him from helping you, and he’s pissed. But he also doesn’t let go of his friends that easily.” Sun groans. “Fuck, I don’t know, it’s not my job to fix anyone’s love life, not even my Alpha’s. Deal with it or don’t. I’m going back to sleep.”

“Sorry.”

Sun waves his arm a little. “Nah, whatever. Not the first time someone’s woken me up screaming, and that includes me. Jake’s mother was a lunatic. Anyway. Sleep. Night. Morning. Whatever.” And then he drops his arm back and, from all intention, falls back asleep.

Now that’s a skill Stiles wishes he had.

For right now, though, he’ll take just not shaking out of his skin.

\--

Forty-five minutes into the class’s discussion of Book Two’s Tom Riddle’s really fucking creepy possession of Ginny Weasley as a metaphor for sexual assault, Stiles’s temper snaps. “What I wish they could have dealt with—what I wish they had dealt with—was the aftermath. She spends months with someone else in her head, blacking out, not knowing what’s real, and afterwards she just trusts everything that she thinks? She doesn’t spend her time wondering if he’s really gone, if he wasn’t still in her head, making her do—”

And then the words catch in his throat like bile and he bolts out of his seat and out of the room before he throws up in the middle of his classroom. Because fuck, fuck, fuck, he wasn’t going to think about this, he wasn’t going to think about this, he wasn’t going to—

He makes it to the bathroom before losing everything in his stomach, the stall door crashing and bouncing behind him. They’re safe, the nogitsune’s gone, the mage is gone, they’re safe. They’re safe. They’re safe.

Levering himself up, Stiles flushes the toilet, then staggers over to the sink to wash his mouth out, because it tastes like acid and sewage and feels like burning. Though his ribs are kind of healed enough to not feel like they’re breaking again. He knows he’ll look awful in the mirror (pale, gray, like he’s dying again), so he doesn’t look. He doesn’t need to see.

Taking in a breath to steady himself, he pushes open the door, keeping his head down so he doesn’t need to look at anyone who—

Pain lances through Stiles’s shoulder as he rebounds off of something hard and stumbles back into the wall; the agony takes his breath away, and it takes him a second to blink the stars from his vision to see—motherfucker. Why is this his life?

Jake stares at him from a few feet away, shoulders hunched, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in a while. Which is a feeling Stiles knows well. “Hi, Stiles. How are you?”

Stiles takes in a deep breath, restraining from grabbing onto his shoulder because that’ll just make it hurt worse (but he pokes bruises, he always has). “Hi. I’m okay. I’m, uh—I’m okay. Are you—how are you?”

Jake shrugs one shoulder. “I’ve been better.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s not your, uh—it’s fine. We should—Sun’s been—I—you should get that.”

Stiles is about to ask what, except, shit, his phone is going off in his pocket, and a month ago he wouldn’t have picked it up, but if it’s the pack, he can’t—he can’t—

He pulls it out of his pocket, jamming it up to his ear. “Yeah? Is everything—are they all—”

“They’re okay. Breathe.” And Stiles pulls in a breath, because in the end, he does what Scott says. Most of the time. “Well, mostly—has Derek gotten in touch with you?”

Stiles leans his head back against his wall, because ugh, he can’t deal with Derek’s shit right now. He can barely deal with his own. “You mean since three weeks ago when he lied about you given him an order to drive me here and then, well, driving me here? No. Why? Is he missing?”

Scott’s voice is weird when he says, “No, he’s…here. He’s just being a little more Derek-y than usual. In the bad Derek-y way, not the new cuddly friendly useful Derek way. It’s okay for now, but…when can you come home?”

“I can—”

“When can you come home without skipping school?”

“We have spring break in about a week and a half. It’s for a week, so I can be home then.” It looks like Jake flinches at that, but Stiles can’t deal his hang-ups, either. “Are you sure you don’t need me sooner?”

Scott’s voice lightens. “Stay in school. Make good choices. I’ll see you in a while.”

“Talk to you later.” When he hangs up, he looks at Jake. “What?”

Jake’s lips tighten. “Are you really going back to Beacon Hills? You’re not healed yet.”

Stiles shrugs his good shoulder. “I’m getting there. And yeah, I have to go back.” He really doesn’t want to fight with Jake, not right now. “You get it, don’t you? It’s pack. I have to go back.”

“We’re your pack, too.”

Huh. Stiles had actually forgotten about that, to be honest. “Right.”

“You don’t sound like you believe me.”

“I—”

“You forgot your—oh.” Katie skids to a halt next to them, holding Stiles’s backpack in one hand. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“No, it’s, uh—” Stiles reaches out and grabs it, slinging it over his good shoulder. “Thanks.”

She looks at him. “You okay? You ran out of there pretty fast. I think the teacher thinks you lost it or something.”

“Kind of. I’m fine.” He looks at Jake. “If you want to talk again, text me or just stop by or whatever. I mean, you know where I live. But that chat should probably be when I don’t feel like a skunk died in my mouth.”

“How do you know it feels like to have a dead skunk in your mouth?”

“Fuck you.”

“You first.”

Katie groans, and Stiles flinches because wow, he had almost forgotten she was there (except he knows where everyone is, all the time, he has to, he has to). “Seriously, just fuck each other or something”—they both turn to glare at her, and she holds her hands up in surrender—“or not, whatever. Just don’t—you know what, I’m leaving now. Bye.” And then, with a wave, she spins and walks away.

Stiles and Jake look at each other, except yeah, this is awkward, so he nods and walks away too, leaving Jake behind. Because holding on didn’t seem to work, and really the only other thing Stiles is good at is letting go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is back to pack! Also Derek! Being Derek!
> 
> Hopefully it'll be up by next Friday, except Thanksgiving is a thing, so probably not. Except I have a train ride, so maybe. We will see.
> 
> (Also, I passed my belt test. Hooray.)


	26. Chapter 26

The next time Stiles finds himself on the way home is very different from the last time; he curls up against the window at the back of the bus, trying to keep an eye on everyone at the same time and not fall asleep, because waking up screaming in the middle of a public bus would not go over super well.

It’s not that he’s hesitant to go home, exactly—he wants to see his dad and the pack again, wants to reassure his brain that they are all alive (they’re safe, they’re safe, they’re safe)—but he needs to learn how to breathe again, and he isn’t sure he knows how to do that in Beacon Hills. Because there’s always something there to take his breath away, and he can never quite get it back while he’s there.

But they’re his pack—his family—and they need him. And he needs them.

Sometimes, though, he wishes things could be back like before the beginning of sophomore year again. Not because he enjoyed being fifteen but because it was safe. Other than the Hale fire—which everyone had thought was an accident—Beacon Hill was just a safe normal town in California where the drought was more likely to kill them than anything else.

And he misses feeling safe, misses being able to sleep, misses being able to trust that everything in his head is something that’s supposed to be there. And it’s not his pack’s fault, but historically they’re also not the safest people to be around.

So he’ll just think about it as getting back on a bike. A big, unsteady, psychotic bike. With fur.

Yeah, maybe that isn’t actually helping.

Scott is the one who gets him from the bus stop this time, because he actually owns a car now, and he looks (scared, worried, like he’s sixteen and doesn’t know how to be a werewolf) weird as he maneuvers out of the ridiculously laid out parking lot.

And Stiles is not willing to let stuff simmer anymore, not when it comes to pack, because he has fucked up too many times (almost lost so much, and he can’t do that again, he can’t, he can’t), so he says, “Tell me what’s going on.”

Scott glances at him, then goes back to staring at the totally empty highway. “There’s something wrong with Derek.”

“Funny enough, I did get that part.” Like Derek lying about Stiles ordering him to give Stiles a ride. Which is supremely strange and really fucked with his head. “Is this like amnesia-Derek or bite-anything-that-moves-Derek or…?”

“It’s like not-eating-food-Derek.”

That’s so not what Stiles thought he was going to say that it actually takes him a few seconds to get it, because that’s not what werewolves do, even when they’re having issues. They overeat—Liam goes through days where he eats almost constantly—or they turn hypervigilant (though they’ve all gotten to that point, because evil rogues and eviler trees), but werewolf metabolism is so fast that not eating isn’t really an option.

So Stiles asks, “Are you sure?”

“You’ll see when we get to his place, but yeah, I’m sure.” Scott drags a hand across his face. “I tried ordering him to eat and to sleep—because he’s not doing that either—and he just stared at me.”

“Alpha ordering?”

“Yeah.”

That’s weird, because werewolves basically always listen to the alpha when they do the glowing-red-eyes shouting thing.

“What does Deaton say?”

Scott side-eyes him. “To wait until you get here.”

“Why?”

“To see how Derek interacts with you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t _know_.” Scott lets out a breath, and some of that terrible anger runs out of him. “I don’t know. Sorry. I just—I’m really afraid he’s going to kill himself, and if he won’t listen to me I don’t know how to stop him.”

Stiles sticks the pad of his thumb in his mouth, starts chewing on it (you can’t break through the skin on your thumb with your teeth, not on purpose, he’s tried, he’s tried bleeding, he’d bleed for them if he thought it would save them and he has). “Is it that bad?”

“You’ll see.”

\--

They go straight to Derek’s apartment, and Stiles pulls the chain off his neck to unlock the door. Scott is standing a bit behind him, which is kind of weird, but this whole thing is weird (his whole life is weird) and so he doesn’t argue because it’s not fucking worth it.

He barely has the door open before Derek literally falls on top of him, knocking him back a step and breathing hot air against his neck. Stiles puts his arms around him mostly so they don’t both fall over, and he can feel all of Derek’s ribs through his skin.

Derek isn’t saying anything (surprise, surprise) so Stiles says, “Okay, big guy. Not that I don’t like cuddling, but one usually does cuddling inside and not vertically, so maybe we could—” Derek starts walking backwards, Stiles in his arms, until they’re inside; he hears Scott trail in behind them, closing the door behind him. “That works.” He stops talking. Derek doesn’t say anything. They’re still hugging. It’s awkward. “Scott says you aren’t eating.” Derek growls a little. “ _I_ can feel you haven’t been eating. Not that I’m eating all that much, because, hey, trauma doesn’t do so well with appetites, but you’re a werewolf and also Scott told you to eat and you didn’t listen so do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

Derek growls again. It’s apparently a thing that he’s doing. Growling. Not super helpful. Stiles pokes at him to try to get him to let go enough so that Stiles can see anything other than his shirt, which also doesn’t get him anywhere, and this is going to be a really long day if he has to stand here all day.

Although he realizes that, for the first time in days—weeks?—nothing hurts.

“Are you taking my pain?”

No response. Of course not. Because Derek is being fucking idiotic and has apparently forgotten how to talk. So Stiles manages to wedge his hands in between them and pushes a little. “Let go, Derek. I want to look at you.”

Derek jerks away, looking…hurt, Stiles thinks, in the part of his brain that is not terrible at reading people. Which doesn’t make any fucking sense, and Stiles hasn’t slept enough in the past forever to figure out what the fuck is going on, so he just stares at Derek for a minute, then asks, “Why were you taking my pain?” Which is back now, also, and ow, that hurts.

A low whine rising from Derek’s throat, crests, and then fades.

Also not a useful answer.

So Stiles heads over towards the couch. “I’m going to sit down, because standing here is awkward. Also I just remembered that your apartment probably smelled like me, which was probably weird, so sorry about that. I hope you had some sort of pack cuddling here so it smelled like someone other than just me.”

“We haven’t done that,” Scott says, and Stiles almost jumps out of his skin because he genuinely forgot that Scott was in the room with him (goddamn fucking silent werewolves). “You and I are the only two he’s let in here.”

Stiles twists (ow) to look at Derek, who’s standing in the exact same place on the floor, staring at him. “Seriously? I thought that this was your thing, having pack being all packly around you. Scent marking and all that shit. Also seriously you should eat something, you look like you haven’t eaten since I left.”

“I don’t think he has.”

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Stiles gets up and heads over towards the kitchen, rummaging through the cabinets. They’re way emptier than they should be for a werewolf’s place, much less Derek’s place, and he gets having to throw out the food that went bad when they were gone but it seriously looks like Derek hasn’t gone shopping since then. Which is frankly terrifying.

He eventually ends up with a box of crackers, a slab of frozen bacon, and some canned fruit. He sticks the bacon on the counter, carrying the crackers and fruit out and sticking them on the table in front of the couch. “I know you think canned fruit tastes like metal, but seriously, eat. I’ll make you some bacon.” And then he heads back into the kitchen to start frying up some bacon. Oil spatter. Yay.

But the time he has managed to actually get the bacon cooked—not optimal, but Derek needs protein—Derek has finished the canned fruit and is most of the way through the box of crackers. Scott is, for whatever reason, sitting in one of the chairs instead of next to him, so Stiles sits down on the couch next to him, setting the bacon down on the table next to the empty can.

Derek stops eating the crackers. Stares at the plate of bacon. Stares at Stiles. Stares at the plate of bacon.

“It’s there to eat,” Stiles tells him after a moment, “not look at.”

Derek looks at him again. Eats another cracker. Maybe this is what it’s like, owning a dog. Or maybe a cat. Cats are prickly and uncommunicative, or so he’s heard.

From the chair, sounding…off, Scott says, “He wants you to eat a piece.”

Stiles looks at him. “What?”

“Derek. He wants you to eat a piece of bacon.”

Oh for fuck’s sake. “How do you know that? Secret werewolf telepathy?”

“I just do.” Scott sighs, looking overwhelmingly exhausted. Almost as exhausted as Stiles feels. “If you eat a piece, he’ll probably eat the rest.”

The idea of eating a piece of greasy, oily bacon—of eating anything (because hey, like he said, trauma fucks with appetite)—turns his stomach a little, but he didn’t fry up all that bacon just for Derek to stare at it, so he reaches out, grabs a piece, and starts eating it.

Almost as soon as the last bite is in his mouth, Derek puts down the crackers, picks up the plate, and, hunched over it, starts shoveling the bacon into his mouth.

Stiles stares at him, then asks, “Is that just a weird werewolf thing?”

He (of course) doesn’t answer, so Stiles turns to Scott, who’s watching them like they’re a particularly hard math problem. And then he stands. “I’m going to go get Deaton.”

“You could answer my question.” Scott heads towards the door. “Or not. That’s cool too.”

“I’ll be back.”

“Cool.” Scott slips out of the apartment, and Stiles turns back towards Derek, who has made an astounding amount of progress on the bacon. “So. This is weird.” Derek eats some more bacon. “Yeah, same.” Derek offers him the plate of bacon. “Not that much same. Wow, it is remarkably easy to hold a one-sided conversation with you. Maybe this is why people talk to plants. Not that I talk to plants. Though that’s more because of a lack of plants than a lack of me talking.”

Derek continues eating bacon. It’s becoming actually remarkably disturbingly like talking to an omnivorous plant. But at least he’s eating.

Stiles yawns. “So I’m guessing from the lack of you saying anything that you’re not about to explain why you stopped eating.” More bacon. There’s almost no more bacon left. “That’s fair. I don’t like talking to people about shit, either. Well, no, that’s a lie, I just don’t like talking to people about _my_ shit.” And, yep, that’s the end of the bacon. “I would make you more food, but you don’t have any more food unless you literally want to eat sugar out of the bag—or flour, but apparently raw flour can kill you, so maybe you don’t want to do that, though maybe werewolf immune systems are strong enough to survive that, and also I’ve definitely eaten raw cookie dough which definitely has raw flour, so yeah.” Derek stands up, grabbing the crackers and the can and the empty plate. “Or you can go with the raw flour. That works too.”

Derek ignores him, heading into the kitchen. A minute later, the water runs, then turns off, and then silence.

Stiles yawns again, curling up against the couch arm next to him. He’s so fucking tired, and he would sleep all the time if it didn’t require waking up. Or nightmares. But he’s basically continuously hovering between shaking awakedness and drowsy near-catatonia. It’s a bad combination.

His life is a bad combination.

Derek walks back into the room, sitting down next to him. Stiles tries to turn to look at him, but he’s just so goddamn tired, his head too heavy, and he feels safe here, safer than he’s felt since everything happened. He feels like he could even remember that they’re all alive, because Derek is here, right next to him, close enough to touch.

He’s half-asleep when Derek’s hand closes on his shoulder, pulling him over to lean against Derek’s side. He tries to rouse himself, then subsides when Derek’s hand threads into his hair, thumb stroking back and forth.

“I should be taking care of you,” Stiles mumbles. “That’s why they brought me here. Scott. That’s why Scott brought me here. Scott’s not a they. I don’t think Scott is a they. Do you think Scott is a they?”

“Shh.”

Stiles’s eyes slide shut, and after a moment he gives up trying to open them again. “I keep thinking all of you are dead. I thought you were dead, or gone, or that I was going to be too late.” The pain is gone again, and he has the thought he should do something about that, or say something, but then it’s gone. “’m always too late.”

“Shh, Stiles.”

He’s falling now, tumbling over and over, and he tries to jerk himself up but Derek’s hand is heavy against him, tracing circles against his skin. “’m going to wake up screaming. B’cause y’re always gone when I wake up, and ‘m forgetting and I don’ wanna forget.”

Heat presses against the top of his head. “Go to sleep, Stiles. I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

\--

Stiles wakes up sprawled across an empty couch to the sound of growling and his phone announcing, “— _McCall is safe. Derek Hale is safe. Lydia Martin is safe. Isaac Lahey is—”_ He flails at his phone until it turns off, levering himself upright and turning gingerly (because bad sleeping habits, Stiles, do better next time) to try to find the source of the growling.

It is, to nobody’s surprise, Derek.

Because fuck his life.

Derek in front of the open door of his apartment, blocking it and growling almost steadily, which is amazingly terrifying and also impressive vocal cord control. He’s too big for Stiles to see who’s past him.

Though he figures it out a minute later when Scott says, “Please let us in.”

The growling gets louder.

“Stiles, are you in there?”

“Yeah.” Stiles pushes himself to an actually mostly standing position. “Um. Did you find what you were looking for or whatever?”

“I have Deaton with me.”

So apparently…yes? Maybe? “Cool.” Stiles pads over to where Derek is standing, trying to lean around him to see Scott. Derek shifts to block his view, the asshole. “What the fuck?”

“We’d like to be able to come in.”

“Yeah, I got that.” Stiles pokes at Derek’s side, which accomplishes actually nothing (except reminding him that Derek needs to eat again, like, continuously). “What do you expect me to do about it?”

“Ask him to move.”

“It’s not going to work.”

“I suggest you try it,” Deaton says, and right, Deaton is there, and sounding infuriatingly Deaton-y.

Stiles closes his eyes, sends out a wish into the ether for patience, and looks at Derek. “Can you move like five feet to the side so they can come in? This way you can growl at them without anyone thinking you’re harboring a dog in your apartment.”

Derek moves five feet to the side in Stiles’s direction, pulling Stiles with him, which, okay, that kind of works. Close enough. He’ll take it.

Scott and Deaton head into the apartment, closing the door behind them, and Derek, being Derek, actually keeps growling at them. Which, now that Stiles thinks about it, is actually pretty fucking weird, given how much Derek is into the whole Scott-is-the-alpha-let’s-treat-him-as-such thing, at least since the whole being-a-fucking-asshole thing. So growling at Scott, especially as angrily as he is right now, doesn’t make any sense.

Deaton looks like he’s examining Stiles as closely as Scott is examining Derek, which is kind of weird because Stiles is pretty sure here’s here for Derek, but Stiles also doesn’t know how much Deaton remembers from the whole amnesia thing, so maybe it’s just that.

For a minute, nobody says anything, and finally Stiles gets sick of it and asks, “So, do you know what’s going on?”

“Yes,” Deaton says, “I think I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...that happened. And by that I mean over a year between posts. Sorry.
> 
> Chances are the next chapter won't be up for a few weeks because of finals, but I will hopefully actually get through the rest of this story now that I'm unstuck.


	27. Chapter 27

“Care to share with the class? And by the class I mean mostly me, because Scott seems to know what’s going on, and Derek—” Stiles looks at Derek. “Yeah.”

Deaton almost smiles. “It appears, though I’m not yet certain how, that the alpha bond passed from Mr. McCall to you.”

What.

That’s not.

A little bit of that makes sense in a way that Stiles really doesn’t want to think about, no, not at all, so he turns and looks at Derek, who’s quit growling and is now making the unhappiest noises Stiles has ever heard. “Derek?”

Derek jerks his head to look at him, then flinches a little and, before Stiles can say anything else, shifts down into full-wolf, his clothes falling to a puddle around him because magic.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Wolf!Derek looks up at him. “We have to talk about this.” Derek nudges up against his leg, then licks his hand, and he grimaces but then gives in and pets Derek. “You’re ridiculous.” Derek whines. “Ridiculous. Why is this my life?”

“Do you have any idea how this might have happened?” Deaton asks.

“I—motherfucker, the tree.” Scott looks at him. “When I was looking for all of you, I connected to the Nemeton, which led me to you. But it, uh, connected me to Derek first. I thought it was mostly because he was here first, you know, he’s been part of the territory longer—well, when I started thinking about it, I wasn’t really thinking about it then, but—shit.”

He crouches down next to Derek, who is fucking huge. Deaton is examining both of them. “Can you feel it, Mr. Stilinski?”

“Most of what I feel right now is tired. There could be almost anything in my head right now and I wouldn’t know it.” Stiles leans his head against Derek’s flank. “We need to talk about this. You know that, right?” Derek nudges him so hard he almost falls over. “Okay, not helpful. We really seriously do need to talk about this, figure out how to fix this.”

Derek jerks between Stiles and the other two, moving so fast Stiles falls over. Scott, from the other side of him, says, “I don’t think he likes that.”

“Yeah, well, this apparently isn’t working, and I can’t live the rest of my life here. And Derek can’t just come live at school with me.”

“Mr. Stilinski is right,” Deaton says (and when has he ever said that before). “This is not sustainable. From what I can tell, Mr. Hale isn’t receiving sufficient metaphysical feedback that should be coming from an alpha, as Mr. Stilinski is human and therefore not suited for providing it. It’s why he is having so much trouble currently.”

“So how do we transfer alphahood from me to Scott?”

“The simplest means of removing an alpha is through their death.”

Before Stiles can process the fact that Deaton just actually fucking said that, he’s flat on his back on the ground with Derek growling on top of him so hard Stiles’s entire body vibrates with the force of it.

Stiles reaches up with his good arm to pet Derek’s side (because his head is facing Scott and Derek). “I’d rather pass on that option, if it’s all the same to you. And Derek, you’re sitting on my head. Move.”

There’s a second of growling, and then Derek moves so Stiles has room to sit up. He sighs, keeping one hand resting on Derek’s flank. Wolf!Derek is so much less of an asshole than human!Derek, most of the time. But Derek is still human, more or less, and just because he’ll go back to being a dick doesn’t mean they shouldn’t fix him.

“So other than killing me—which, again, I’m not too fond of—what are our options?”

“There are other ways of shifting allegiances, but most of them rely on the beta’s desire to shift allegiances. Forcing shifts…there are not many, and they’re not particularly safe. We may need to try a number of techniques, and the safest and simplest will be to convince Derek to willingly shift his allegiance back to Mr. McCall.”

Derek shifts into a—naked—human, snaps, “No,” and then turns back into a wolf.

Which, okay. (Also, Derek’s dick, that’s a thing that exists and Stiles has now seen, and that is not an experience he ever thought he would have, so there’s that.)

Derek snuffles at his hands, and, right, smell. Derek can smell stuff. So can Scott. And now his life is awkward (not that it’s not usually awkward, but now it’s awkwarder).

“So,” Stiles says brightly, “I just need to be annoying enough that Derek will never want to see me again. That shouldn’t be hard.” Derek licks his face. “Appreciate the love, big guy. Appreciate the love.”

Scott starts laughing at that, which, okay, rude. But before Stiles can say anything about it, Deaton says, “The other issue is, should we not be able to fix this before you have to leave, you will need to ease out of the attachment. Otherwise Mr. Hale will revert to the same level of broken codependency as when you left the first time.”

“So, again, being annoying.”

“That process will also consist of deliberate distancing where you spend longer amounts of time further apart.”

Stiles nods. He can do that. “Also, any idea why he’s doing”—Derek growls—“that?”

Deaton examines them again. “This is likely at least in part because Derek is not receiving the metaphysical response he needs, so he is attempting to supplement it by being as close to his alpha as possible. Additionally, the process of losing and then gaining an Alpha is a traumatic one, and to be separated from his alpha so soon was likely difficult to deal with.

Understanding lights up in Scott’s eyes. “Is that why Liam has been sitting as close to me as possible whenever he’s around?”

“Probably, though I believe it is also an attempt at protection.”

Scott looks like he can’t decide whether he’s pleased or offended, which ends up with him mostly just looking baffled. “Why would he—I’m fine.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Not the main issue here. How am I going to distance myself from Derek if he won’t separate more than like fifteen feet from me?”

“I suggest you convince him to become human,” Deaton says, “and reason with him. Derek is a very intelligent young man.” And then he walks out of Derek’s apartment.

Because Deaton.

Also, of course Deaton can’t resist not only getting the last word but insulting Stiles. Because Stiles is also a very intelligent young man, thank you very much.

Scott looks between Stiles and Derek, then says, “I’m going to head out now, unless you think you need me to stay, because me being here isn’t helping anything at the moment. I’ll keep my phone on.” He drops down to a crouch in front of Derek, ignoring the low growl that brings. “I want you back in the pack. We all do.” And then he stands and turns to go.

“Bring food,” Stiles tells him, because he’s not sure how he would go food shopping with Wolf!Derek in tow. Or even if he would be able to convince Derek, wolf or not, to leave the apartment with him. “And can you tell my dad what’s going on?”

Scott laughs, turning back to go. “Oh, no, that’s your job. I’ll be back with food later.” And then he leaves too.

Stiles turns to look at Derek. “So. It’s just you and me now.” Wolf!Derek looks like he rolls his eyes. “Any chance of you turning back into a real boy?” A chuff. “Don’t you have to listen to me or something? Isn’t that what me being alpha means?” Nothing, though Derek is watching him like he’s daring him to try it. “Okay, look, let’s make a deal. I’ll stay in here for the next twenty-four hours if you spend at least ten of them as a human. And actually _talk_ to me. Deal?” Derek’s head bobs up and down. “Okay, I’ll take that as a yes. Great. Deal’s been made, no take backs.”

Derek looks like he rolls his eyes before he heads back over to the couch, jumping up on it. There’s not much else to do, so Stiles follows him, sitting down next to him. Derek sticks his head in his lap.

“Why is this less weird when you’re a wolf? I mean, this would be super weird if you were a person. Not that you’re not a person. You’re definitely a person. You’re very person-y. But just not right now. Right now you a…wolfy person.” Derek woofs out a laugh. “You’re also much more cheerful as a wolf. Though this way, you have to actually sit here and listen to me talk. Though I guess you could just leave. Which, I mean, I guess you could do. If you want.” Derek doesn’t move. “Okay then.”

They sit there for another while, and finally Stiles tells him, “As much as may seem like I just talk because I like hearing the sound of my own voice, I do actually prefer holding conversations with people. So you could, you know, talk to me.” Nothing. “Seriously? Fine. Ten hours, though. Ten hours. You promised.”

Wolf!Derek noses at his chest, then settles down with a huff.

Same, Wolf!Derek. Same.

\--

“—breathe when you were gone, couldn’t breathe from the moment I—” The voice cuts off, the hand stroking through Stiles’s hair stopping.

It’s an easy wakening, soft enough that Stiles’s heart rate only jumps fifteen or twenty beats per minute, and he doesn’t bolt upright. Which, at this point, is a goddamn miracle. But that sounded like Derek’s voice, and he can’t hear his phone but Derek is _here_ so he’s alive so Stiles doesn’t need it.

Once he gets past the thought of everyone else, everyone else, where is everyone else.

“You’re human.” He sounds slow and sleepy, his vowels a little too long. “You were talking to me.” The hand moves through his hair, but Derek doesn’t say anything. Stiles opens his eyes. Derek is just above him, eyes slitted shut. “Have you been sitting here, human, while I slept?” Still nothing. “You cheater.”

Derek shrugs. “You said ten hours of human. You didn’t say ten hours while you were awake.”

Stiles drops his arm over his eyes, which involves hitting Derek, which, whoops. “Sorry. But still. You cheater.”

“I followed your instructions to the letter.”

Stiles picks up his head and drops it down on the pillow, and how the hell did he get somewhere with a bed, considering he’s pretty sure he passed out on the couch again. “Are we going to play this game for the entire time I’m back? Because that’s not a game I particularly want to play. Seriously. We have to fix this, and we can’t do that if you won’t talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to fix.”

Stiles sits up, leaning back against the headboard (and shit, he’s in Derek’s bed, this is a thing, shit), and Derek leans back to see can see him, though Derek’s hand moves to his leg. “This is going to fuck you up, and I don’t want to be the one to fuck you. I can’t be the one to do that to you. Please don’t make me be the one to do that to you.”

Derek’s lips tighten. “There’s nothing to fix. I’m fine.”

“It’s the system that’s making you think that. It’s the whole fucked up alpha thing. You only think you want me to be your alpha because I’m already you alpha.”

“I _want_ you.”

Stiles makes a pushing-away motion with his hands. “No, you don’t. You’ve never wanted me. I’m the fuck-up human hanger-on. You don’t want me.”

“I _do_.”

What the fuck is wrong with Derek? “ _No you don’t_. No you damn well don’t, and if you were in your right mind you would know that, and even if you do want me, even if you did want me, it doesn’t matter, because doing this will break you, and _I won’t be responsible for that_.”

Derek stares at him for a moment, then stands and storms out of the room.

Well, that went well.

Stiles takes a moment before prying himself out of bed (Derek’s bed) and going to go piss and wash his hands. He really wants to brush his teeth but Derek only seems to have one toothbrush, and Stiles isn’t going to use it. He also really wants to shower, but he feels kind of weird borrowing Derek’s soap, so he’ll shower when he stops by at home.

If Derek will let him leave.

Why the fuck is this his life.

Actually.

Seven hand-washes in, Stiles decides he should probably stop hiding in the bathroom and actually go face the man he woke up fully-clothed in bed with because this is still his fucking life.

Derek is cooking when he gets out, scrambling what looks like an entire carton of eggs, and Stiles heads over to lean against the counter near him. “You want me to make anything?” Derek shakes his head. “You want me to _do_ anything?” Another head shake. “Okay, I’ll just stand here and…breathe, I guess.”

Derek keeps cooking.

“Is cooking a thing for werewolves? Like, I know werewolves are into some weird shit with food. Not like kinky shit. But. Whatever. Feeding people shit.”

“You like feeding people.”

“Yeah, well, apparently I’m basically an honorary werewolf, so there’s that. And mostly I like baking. And yes, I like feeding people. But werewolves are weird about feeding people.”

Derek pokes at the eggs a little more, then shuts off the stove. It’s an electric stove. Derek doesn’t like flames. Stiles can’t blame him. “What are we worth, if we are unable to provide?”

Wow, that’s fucked up. “You’re a person. You’re worth—you’re a _person_.”

Derek’s gaze flicks away, and he starts pulling out plates from one of his cabinets. He’s like a real person now. It’s kind of amazing, considering he was basically catatonic the day before. “And you’re my alpha.”

Stiles facepalms. Derek doesn’t notice.

“Eat.” Derek piles a mountain of eggs, like five or six eggs worth of eggs, onto a plate and hands it to Stiles. “Food. Eat.”

Stiles blinks at it. “I’m not an actual werewolf, you know.”

“Eat.”

“I can’t eat this much.”

“ _Eat_.”

Fine. Stiles grabs a fork from the utensil drawer, hands it to Derek, and then grabs another fork for himself. He starts eating. The eggs taste like…egg.

Stiles is probably more surprised by that than he should be.

He’s also gotten more sleep in the past twenty-four hours than in the previous month combined, and he’s pretty sure it’s fucking with his head, because his brain feels both clear and foggy simultaneously, like when you get drunk enough to think you’re sober but none of the functioning is actually there.

So yeah, there’s a bit of surprise that the eggs taste like egg.

“I’m assuming Scott dropped off some food, then.”

Derek nods. “Eat.”

“I’m eating.” Stiles takes another bite of egg. There’s a lot of egg. “I hope you actually let him into the apartment this time.”

“He feels wrong.”

Oh, Jesus. “He’s your alpha.”

“ _You’re_ my alpha.” Derek actually sounds irritated now, miracle of miracles. It’s almost like normal. “And he feels wrong.”

“Will you do me a favor and actually let him in when he shows up? He’s going to be your alpha again when we fix all of this.”

Derek lets out a low growling noise. “You’re my alpha.”

“For fuck’s sake, Derek. For actual fuck’s sake. You know this isn’t sustainable.”

“You’re my _alpha_.”

Stiles jams a mouthful of eggs into his mouth to keep from saying something stupid or unforgiveable. He really doesn’t want to fuck this up. He can’t fuck this up. He doesn’t know what the fuck is wrong with Derek, why Derek is pretending to want to keep him as alpha when they all know that that’s fucking ridiculous, and his brain isn’t working well enough to figure it out because he’s so fucking tired and he’s so fucking broken, his brain half an inch to the left of his body, everything just a little bit sideways.

Derek seems perfectly happy to keep eating eggs for as long as Stiles does, and there are certainly enough eggs to eat, so Stiles just keeps shoveling eggs into his mouth like a fucking moron.

He has shit to do, homework and such, and he still has to catch up with things because of his…extended vacation, and things still kind of hurt, but right now he’s genuinely afraid of leaving Derek alone because he seems stable now and was a total fucking mess yesterday and he doesn’t know if Derek will melt down if he leaves again, and he doesn’t want this to be his fucking goddamn life.

So he sticks another piece of egg in his mouth.

Halfway through the plate, he can’t eat any more egg and Derek has already finished his plate, so he hands the plate over to him, and Derek starts eating that too.

Once he finishes it, he sticks it in the sink, then turns back into a wolf, his pants pooling on the floor below him. And Stiles realizes he was shirtless the entire time and Stiles never actually noticed, and that says something about his life, that he didn’t notice that the hot guy was shirtless around him, because that is now his entire fucking life.

Well, not at college. During classes. In the dorms, yes, sometimes, but not actually outside.

Usually.

Sometimes.

And all because he wanted to find a dead body in the forest all those years ago. He’s never been sure if he regretted it.

He’s still not.


End file.
